IDAT7215

Computer Programming for

Product Development and
Applications

Lecture 1-2: Python Installation and

Python Fundamentals

Dr. Zulfiqar Ali

Python Installation
Python Installation

▪ Download and Install Anaconda

– https://www.anaconda.com/products/individual
– Choose your OS system, Recommend the 64-bit version
– Install with the default configuration
Launch Jupyter Notebook ▪ Open Anaconda Navigator.
Launch Jupyter Notebook
Create your first notebook
Create your first notebook

Code Cell
Set Your Script Name
Python fundamentals
Outline

▪ Variables and Types in Python

▪ Data Structures in Python

▪ Python Functions

▪ Control Flows
Variables and Types

▪ Variable
– Specific, case-sensitive name
– Call up value through variable name

▪ In Python, we do not have to explicitly

declaim the type of the variable (e.g.,
‘dog_name’) in any way.

▪ Python automatically detected the type

of a variable.

Rules of Variable Name: https://www.w3schools.com/python/python_variables.asp

Python Types

▪ The type of a variable can be

queried by using the built-in function
type.

▪ The type of a variable is not fixed.

Basic data types in Python

▪ Basic data types

– int (integers)
– float (floating-point number)
– str (string)
– bool (boolean: True or False)
– …
▪ The name of types act as conversion
operators between types
Arithmetic Operations in Python

▪ Python supports the following basic arithmetic operations:

Operator Operation Example
= Assign a value to a variable >>> a = 2 #a=2
+ Addition >>> a = 199 + 201 # a = 400
- Subtraction >>> a = 200 – 300 # a = -100
* Multiplication >>> a = 15.2 * 3 # a = 45.6
/ Division (Remark: it always returns a float) >>> a = 15 / 2 # a = 7.5
// Floor division (or integer division) >>> a = 15 // 2 #a=7
** Power >>> a = 4 ** 3 # a = 64
% Remainder >>> a = 15 % 2 #a=1
String Operations in Python

▪ Create a string
– A string is a sequence of characters.
– The characters are specified either between single (‘)
or double (“) quotes
– E.g., a = “abc” or a = ‘abc’

▪ Concatenate strings
– ‘+’ operator
– join
String Operations in Python

▪ Repeat a string

▪ Tokenize a string

▪ Replace
Data Structures In Python

▪ Lists

▪ Tuples

▪ Dictionaries

▪ Sets
Lists

▪ Probably the most fundamental data

structure in Python.
▪ A list contains arbitrary number of
elements that stored in sequential order.
▪ The elements are separated by commas
and written between square brackets.
▪ Indexing begins from 0
▪ The elements don’t need to be of the
same type.
▪ The elements of a list can be any type,
including “List” itself.
▪ List is mutable.
Common Operations on List

▪ Get or set the i-th element in a list by

indexing with square brackets

▪ Get or set elements in a list by slicing

with square brackets
– General format for slicing:
a[first:last:step]

inclusive not inclusive

Common Operations on List

▪ Sorting sequences
– sort: it modifies the original list
– sorted: it returns a new sorted list and
leaves the original list unchanged.
– The parameter reverse=True (both to
sort and sorted) can be given to get
descending order of elements
Common Operations on List

▪ Concatenate lists
– +: return a new list. The original list is unchanged
– extend: modify a list in place
– append: add a single element to the end of a list
➢ If append another list onto a list, it will treat another list
as a single object
Tuples

▪ Tuples are lists’ immutable cousins.

▪ Pretty much anything you can do to a

list that doesn’t involve modifying it,
you can do to a tuple.

▪ Tuples are defined by using

parentheses (or nothing) instead of
square brackets.
Tuples

▪ Tuples are a convenient way to return

multiple values from functions
Dictionaries

▪ Dictionary associates values with

keys.

▪ Dictionary can be created by listing

the comma separated key-value
pairs in curly brackets. Keys and
values are separated by a colon.

▪ Dictionary allows to quickly retrieve

the value corresponding to a given
key using square brackets.
Sets

▪ Set represents a collection of unique

elements.

▪ Set can be created by listing its elements

between curly brackets.

▪ Set can also be created by using set()

itself
Sets

▪ Sets are used for two main

reasons:
– Very fast membership checking
(in is a very fast operation on
sets
– Find the unique items in a
collections

▪ Sets are used less frequently

than lists and dictionaries
Data Structures In Python

Can we change the Are the items in the

Type Example Description content within this collection ordered
collection? stored?
List: an mutable,
list [1, 2, 3] Yes – mutable Yes – ordered
ordered collection
Tuple: an immutable,
tuple (1, 2, 3) No – immutable Yes – ordered
ordered collection
Set: Unordered
set {1, 2, 3} collection of unique Yes – mutable No – unordered
values
Dictionary: Unordered
dict {'a':1, 'b':2, 'c':3} Yes – mutable No – unordered
(key, value) mapping
Python Functions

▪ A function is a rule for taking zero or more

inputs and returning a corresponding out
by performing a sequence of operations.

▪ When you define a function, you specify

the name and the sequence of operations.

▪ Later, you can “call” the function by name.

▪ In Python, a function is defined with def

statement.
Python Functions

function name input parameter

def statement
docstring documents the purpose of the function

return statement
return value
Python Functions

▪ Function parameter can also be given default values.

Python Functions

▪ In addition to positional arguments we have seen so far, a function call can

also have named arguments.

▪ Note that the named arguments didn’t need to be in the same order as in the
function definition. The named arguments must come after the positional
arguments.
Control Flows in Python

▪ With control flow, you can execute certain code blocks conditionally and/or
repeatedly: these basic building blocks can be combined to create
sophisticated programs.

▪ Three different categories for control flows

– Loops for repetitive tasks (while, for)
– Decision making with the if-else statement
– Exception-Handling (break, continue, try-except)
Loops for repetitive tasks

▪ In Python we have two kinds of loops: while and for

▪ While loop is used to execute a block of statements repeatedly until a

given condition is satisfied.
Loops for repetitive tasks

▪ For loop are used for sequential traversal.

▪ At each iteration, the variable i refers to another value from the list in order.
Decision making with the if statement

▪ The if-else statement is used to decide whether a certain statement or

block of statements will be executed or not.
– if a certain condition is true then a block of statement is executed otherwise not.
General form of an if-else statements
Exception handling

▪ Sometimes, you will find that you will need to handle for exceptions.

▪ The exceptions could be invalid operations (e.g., divide by 0 or compute the

square root of a negative number) or a class of values that you simply are not
interested in.

▪ To handle these exceptions, you can use

– Break
– Continue
– Try-except
Break

▪ break statement is only allowed inside a loop body.

▪ When break executes, the loop terminates.

▪ In practical use, a break statement is usually used with if statement to

break a loop conditionally.
Break

▪ Breaking the loop, when the wanted element is found

Continue

▪ Continue statement is only allowed inside a loop body.

▪ When continue executes, the current iteration of the loop terminates, and
the execution continues with next iteration of the loop.

▪ In practical use, a continue statement is usually used with if statement to

executes conditionally.
Continue

▪ Stopping current iteration and continuing to the next one (do not break the
loop).
Try-except

▪ Unhandled exceptions will cause your program to crash. You can handle
them using try and except statement
▪ If the code in the try block works, the except block is skipped.
▪ If the code in the try block fails, it jumps to the except section.

Without the try block, the

program will crash and raise
an error.
Try-except
https://www.w3schools.com/python/default.asp