Hi, folks. Welcome to Python for Data Science specialization. This specialization is designed for you that you are curious about programming, and you have interest in data science, and you have little or no background in programming, and you are willing to experience and explore a new world. We are here for you, and you love to play and have some fun. Let me tell you a little bit about me. My name is Di Wu. You can pronounce my first name as D-E-E. I have taught programming languages, algorithms and data structures, database management systems, data mining, and machine learning. I'm very excited to work with you for this specialization, Python for Data Science. The learning objectives for this specialization is, once you finish this specialization, you will be able to describe or explain what programming languages are, including Python. You are going to write simple Python programs, and also you will be familiar with how to define and how to call functions, and also a little bit about object-oriented programming. Most importantly, you will be able to use Python packages for data science in specifically. The outline of our specialization is like this. We have three courses where Course 1 is called Python basics. You're going to have a brief introduction to the programming languages. You're going to learn the basics of variables, operations. You are going to learn how these two together can build up the computation of Python. Then you are going to learn two flow control. One is branching, where you have the condition you go to different direction. The other one is repetition, when you satisfy some condition, you are going to do the same task over and over. Course 2 is called Python functions, in which you are going to learn the reason and why we need functions and you are going to define the most simple functions. Also, you're going to define functions with return value and some functions with arguments. You will be familiar with the functions, you are going to use them and you're going to define them, and to compose a lot of functions together to build up a complex program. In the last one, it is the Python packages for data science. In this course, you're going to have the idea of what Python packages are, and how to use them. You're going to learn several, why did they use the Python packages including NumPy, pandas, Matplotlib, and others. We built up this specialization using the same strategy, which is LEGO. I believe maybe you have already played LEGO in your childhood. That is when you have a new LEGO package, you're going to have a book of instructions and some bags of the little pieces. Our course, in the first two courses, you basically will learn the instructions, how to define variables, how to be familiar with functions. Then in the last class, you are going to learn how to apply the knowledge you gained previously and then you can have the pieces come together to build up the fantastic projects. The process will be easy-to-follow, happy-to-play, and interesting-to-apply. Let's get started.
