1. pycon2014-keynote
  2. Open Source - Open Science.ipynb
The ideals of science
  • The pursuit of verifiable answers about the world.
  • The validation of our results by reproduction.
  • An altruistic, collective enterprise for humanity's benefit.
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%pylab inline
%run talktools

Populating the interactive namespace from numpy and matplotlib
The ideals reality of science
  • The pursuit of verifiable answers about the world.
    • The pursuit of highly cited papers for your CV.
  • The validation of our results by reproduction.
    • Validation by convincing journal referees who didn't see your code or data.
  • An altruistic, collective enterprise for humanity's benefit.
    • A deadly race to outrun your colleagues in front of the bear of grant funding.
Open Source Software in this context

  • Open, collaborative by definition.

    • Industrial competition can coexist...

  • Continuous, public process.

    • Software releases part of the process.
    • Distributed credit.
    • Open peer review.

  • Reproducible by necessity.

  • Public bug tracking.

  • Automated testing.

    • "It taught me how often I make mistakes" - M. Brett.

Scientific computing: varied and complex

PEP 465: meaningful dialogue

  • Feb 22 2014: Nathaniel Smith proposes A @ B

  • Apr 8 2014: Guido approves PEP:

    [Python-Dev] PEP 465: A dedicated infix operator for matrix multiplication
Guido van Rossum guido at python.org 
"I'm now accepting the PEP, so you all can stop joking around."

  • Apr 10 2014: Benjamin Peterson implements it

    Title:  Implement matrix multiplication operator (PEP 465)
Created on 2014-04-08 02:51 by belopolsky, last changed 2014-04-10 03:56 by python-dev.
This issue is now closed.

Python for us (Scientists)

  • Separation of concerns: *@python-dev

  • Huge amount of leverage: language and tools.

  • Industry collaborations.

  • Culture and community (BDFL model, PSF, PyCon, ...).

In the other direction: what do we contribute?

Beyond Numpy: a whole ecosystem

Scientists: a different community

  • Diversity in usage patterns/needs (@ncoghlan_dev).

  • Often academics:

    • Expand Python's reach in higher education.
    • UC Berkeley, MIT: core CS courses in Python.

Software Carpentry

Sat. 4:15pm, talk by G. Wilson. Monday/Tuesday Workshop.

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website('http://software-carpentry.org')
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The "Data Science" buzz

Image credit: BENEDIKT KOEHLER.

A new $37.8M initiative in Data Science

  • Moore/Sloan Foundations, 5 year support for UC Berkeley, U. Washington, NYU.
  • Open source, Python, central to our effort.
  • We're hiring: Executive Director (now).

New Berkeley Institute for Data Science

Data Science & Education: CS 109 @ Harvard

In [15]:
website('http://cs109.org/homework/homework.php', None)
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**http://numfocus.org**

See Leah Silen at Continuum Booth!