Course overview
In this course, you’ll build a critical understanding of the inner workings of Python and basic computation. You’ll also explore basic number systems, methods of encoding data, how to work with text files, and the best way to optimize data usage. Finally, you’ll learn how to develop simple techniques for reading and writing to files, converting between encodings, and optimizing data usage. This course will put you on your way to mastering Python for data engineering.
Best of all, you’ll learn by doing — you’ll practice and get feedback directly in the browser.
Key skills
- Defining how Python represents data
- Defining encodings
- Processing text files
- Optimizing data usages
Course outline
Programming Concepts in Python [4 lessons]
Binary and Positional Number Systems 1h
Lesson Objectives- Identify how computers represent information internally
- Define the decimal number system
- Define the binary number system
- Apply other number systems like octal and hexadecimal
Encodings and Representing Text in a Computer 1h
Lesson Objectives- Define encodings
- Define bytes objects
- Identify some of the most popular encodings
- Define multi-byte encodings
- Define Unicode
- Decode bytes
- Find encodings
Reading and Writing to Files 1h
Lesson Objectives- Employ different modes of opening files
- Apply context managers
- Process different encodings when reading from files
- Write to files
- Convert between encodings
Memory and Disk Usage 2h
Lesson Objectives- Define fix bit integers
- Define internal representation of integers
- Define the two's complement representation
- Determine how much memory a variable takes
- Reduce the disk usage of data with encodings
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