Python Basics: Retrieving Online Data (Coursera)

Course 2 of 4 in the Python Basics for Online Research Specialization.

What You Will Learn

- Learn strategies for getting coding help and run code to automatically access thousands of pages on Wikipedia.

- Practice playing with text, numbers, true/false values in Python and learn how to handle error messages and ask for help.

- Learn how Python lets us change, grow, access, and play with lists.

- Run code that accesses Twitter from Python, interact with virtually every aspect of Twitter, and learn about social media bots.

Syllabus

WEEK 1

Your Chances of Becoming Famous Using Python

What do you think, is it easier to become famous than it used to be or harder? In this module, you will run code to automatically access thousands of pages on Wikipedia and calculate your probability of becoming famous over time. Let's get started!

WEEK 2

Representing Ideas in Python

There is more to programming than reproducing your calculator. In this module, we learn how to play with text, numbers, true/false values in Python, all towards analyzing a popular pop song. We also learn how to handle error messages and ask for help.

WEEK 3

Representing Collections in Python

Sometimes we deal with individual things in the world, sometimes collections of things. Python represents this idea with collections such as lists. We learn how Python lets us change, grow, access, and play with lists. We'll see how this is useful by reconstructing the Western history of the months of the year.

WEEK 4

Course Summary & Honors: Interactive Demo

In the honor's section of this module, you will run code that accesses Twitter from Python. You have to jump through a few hoops to get it set up, but once it's running you can interact with virtually every aspect of Twitter via Python. If you've ever wondered how social media bots work, this is precisely how.