Community Data Science Workshops (Core)/Workshop/Baby Names/Setup

In this section, we'll download everything we need for tomorrow's projects.

Download the Baby Names project
You'll be playing with data from the list of all baby names in the US (used more than five times in a year) from the last several years:


 * 1) Right click the following file, click "Save Target as..." or "Save link as...", and save it to your Desktop directory: http://mako.cc/teaching/2015/cdsw-autumn/babynames.zip
 * 2) The ".zip" extension on the above file indicates that it is a compressed Zip archive. We need to "extract" its contents. To do this, click on "Start", then "Computer", and navigate to your Desktop directory. Find babynames.zip on your Desktop and double-click on it to "unzip" it. That will create a folder called babynames containing several files.

Test the Baby Names code
Start a command prompt and navigate to the Desktop\babynames directory where the Baby Names code lives.

On Windows

If the Baby Names project is at ,

cd C:\Users\{Your User Name}\Desktop\babynames

will change you into that directory.

Another way to navigate to a directory is to go there using Windows Explorer, clicking into the navigation bar, and typing "powershell" followed by RETURN. This will cause a command shell to open with the current directory already set to the location where you were browsing.

On Mac

Start a command prompt and navigate to the ~/Desktop/babynames directory where the Baby Names code lives. For example, if the Baby Names project is at ,

cd ~/Desktop/babynames

will change you into that directory

On both operating systems

Once you've navigated to the correct directory, type

ls

to show you the source code files in that directory.

One of the files is, which has a ".py" extension indicating that it is a Python script. Type:

python babynames1.py

at the command prompt to execute the babynames1.py Python script. It should output text that says something like this:

There were 12 boys named mako

If it does not, let a mentor know.

Success!
You've completed setup for the Baby Names project.

State Capitals
We'll look at an example Python script that quizzes you on state capitals during the lecture on Saturday.


 * 1) Right click the following file, click "Save Target as..." or "Save link as...", and save it to your Desktop directory: http://mako.cc/teaching/2015/cdsw-spring/state_capitals.py

Success!
You are done downloading the Saturday projects.