I want to start with the obvious. there are many different version of Python, and many platforms you can use to work with it, from command line/terminal, IDEs like Spyder of IDLE, or notebooks like Jupyter. For this course on Python, I have chosen to start with Jupyter Notebooks, because I feel this is a great tool for learning Python.

Installing Python

First things first. You need to get Python on your machine. In this series of lessons, I am going to use the Anaconda Distribution. I am choosing this distribution for one simple reason: it is built for data science, most of the tools you will need for data analysis and machine learning come pre-loaded with Anaconda.

To install this distribution, go to the Anaconda website and install Python: Anaconda

Jupyter Notebook

Once installed, you will find Jupyter Notebook in your program list.

Jupyter will open in your default browser and should look something like this

Click on the New button and then Python 3

You will now have a new notebook that looks like this

Lets start with some very basic code. We will do the traditional Hello World exercise

The code is a follows

print("Hello World")

Print() with the text you wish to print in quotes inside the parenthesis

After you type it into a notebook command box, click the arrow icon to run your code (or hit Shift+Enter)

Click here for lesson 2: Arithmetic Operation, Comparators, and Variables

Back to Python Course: Course