Data Investigations with Python

Harness the power of Python and the powerful data analysis library Pandas to supercharge your journalism and work with large data sources in an efficient and reproducible way. This course will be hands-on using Google Colab to write, run and manage the code you build as part of the course.

Participants will be introduced to the many uses of Python for investigative data-driven research, with a range of opportunities to put the techniques into practice using examples and exercises from real-life data and investigations.

The final session will guide participants through planning and setting up their own Python projects on which to begin implementing the techniques learned throughout the course. It is strongly recommended that participants have identified analytical projects they would like to apply Python to prior to joining the course.

Participants will also have the opportunity to submit their projects for review and feedback one month after the final session. During this month, it is expected that participants will put aside between 4 and 10 hours to work on their projects before submitting them for feedback.

N.B. Python is a great language for writing web scrapers, however, this course will focus on Python’s application to data analysis. If your main objective in learning Python is for scraping, then our specific Web Scraping for Journalists courses would be more suitable.