Tips and hacks

I’m collecting some tips from around the site here. This is not comprehensive. If you think having something else here would help, please open an issue or suggest an edit!

5 easy tricks to use this site better, improve it, boost your grade, and help your classmates

  1. The ← and → keys will tab between pages on this website.

  2. The search bar is useful, but sometimes it doesn’t “see” text inside of code blocks, so don’t think “no results” is definitive.

  3. If you have any questions about something on the website: Click on the GH icon in the upper right, and then “open issue”.

    • Depending on the nature of the question, you can tag me (@donbowen) and/or your classmates (@classmates-2025) to get their attention.

    • I recommend tagging classmates in most cases - you’ll get more answers, improve the discourse in the class, and often, answering your question will probably help other students.

    • How to ask for help to get the best answers

  4. If you spot errors, typos, have a suggestion to clarify a lesson: Click on the GH icon in the upper right, and then “suggest edit”. Edit the pages as you would, describe the changes, and commit! I’ll probably incorporate it, and you’ll get extra credit!

  5. If you have a new idea for a webpage, tutorial, example… just go ahead and make it and send it to me. Parts of the textbook draw heavily on or were written by past students.

How to improve your zoom life, our class, and your grades

  1. Please use headphones!

  2. Buy a second monitor

  3. Update your Zoom software.

For any and all work you do

Fetch early, commit frequently, push often! ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

For more on this process, see the github workflow. ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

Better homework grades

I wrote a section of tips in the homework guidelines. Many of these tips apply to any coding project you work on (Github or not).

Look at your data and objects frequently! (Print them)

As discussed here.

But I really like pandas-profiling for initial examination of variables and dabl is good at “providing a quick overview via visualizations, as well as convenient preprocessing and model search for machine learning.”

lux is good at “automating certain aspects of the data exploration process. Lux is designed to facilitate faster experimentation with data, even when the user does not have a clear idea of what they are looking for.”

None of those packages substitute for LOOKING at data, but they get you going!

Exploit the Community Codebook!

The community codebook will be updated as the semester progresses.

You’ll build your own codebook, a list of “recipes” you use repeatedly, as the semester goes on. But community codebook will help you get started!

Please submit ideas for new entries if you recognize us using code repeatedly! It counts as extra credit ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

Resources, tutorials, data Homework guidelines