Python for Scientists - POGIL Activities

POGIL stands for Practice-Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning, and it is essentially guided task-based learning. Students learn by doing, rather than only reading theory. POGIL activities are provided for all chapters.

The Python for Scientists textbook provides all of its POGIL documents in Interactive Python Notebook, or Jupyter Notebook, form. This form allows a student or group of students to download the notebook and make their changes to the notebook without having to create a new Python project.

To make a clone of the POGIL document, download the IPYNB file by right-clicking on the notebook's link, then Save link as.... Make sure you save the document as a ipynb file (you might have to manually set the file extension). Then, you can import the notebook as-is into the Jupyter Notebook editor of your choice, including the Jupyter Notebook editor or Google Colaboratory.

POGIL IPYNB Downloads

Introduction to Python and IPYNBs: IPYNB
Chapter 3 - Basic Datatypes: IPYNB
Chapter 4.1 - Basic Operations: IPYNB
Chapter 4.2 - Variables: IPYNB
Chapter 4.3 - Whitespace: IPYNB
Chapter 4.5 - Errors: IPYNB
Chapter 4.6 - Typecasting: IPYNB
Chapter 4.7 - F-strings: IPYNB
Chapter 4.9 - Arithmetic: IPYNB
Chapter 5.1 - Lists: IPYNB
Chapter 5.2 - Dictionaries: IPYNB
Chapter 5.5 - Subsetting: IPYNB
Chapter 5.6.1 - String Stripping: IPYNB
Chapter 5.6.2 - Regex: IPYNB
Chapter 5.7 - RNG: IPYNB
Chapter 6.1 - Comparison Operators: IPYNB
Chapter 6.2 - If, Else: IPYNB
Chapter 6.3 - For Loops: IPYNB
Chapter 6.4 - While Loops: IPYNB
Chapter 6.5 - Scope: IPYNB
Chapter 7.1 - Functions: IPYNB
Chapter 7.2.1 & 7.2.2 - Class Definitions, Calls, and Methods: IPYNB
Chapter 7.2.3 - Default Constructors: IPYNB
Chapter 7.2.4 - Nested Classes: IPYNB
Chapter 8.1 - Reading Files: IPYNB
Chapter 8.2 - Writing Files: IPYNB
Chapter 10.3 - Series: IPYNB
Chapter 10.4 - Dataframes: IPYNB
Chapter 10.5 - Summary Statistics: IPYNB
Chapter 11.1 - Webpage Structure: IPYNB
Chapter 11.1.3 - Requests: IPYNB
Chapter 11.2 - Beautiful Soup: IPYNB
Chapter 11.3 - APIs: IPYNB

Using POGIL IPYNBs

Google Colaboratory

After downloading the IPYNB, go to colab.research.google.com. Then, click on the Upload tab.

Click on the Choose File button, then choose the IPYNB that you downloaded and want to open in Colab.

Jupyter Notebook

Launch Jupyter Notebook, then navigate to the location that you would like to store your Jupyter Notebook in (like the Documents directory).

Click on the Upload button, then choose the IPYNB that you downloaded and want to open in Jupyter Notebook.

Visual Studio Code

To edit and run Jupyter Notebooks in Visual Studio Code, make sure you install the Python extension for Visual Studio Code. Open the notebook in Visual Studio Code; if the extension is not installed, you should be prompted to install Python tools by Visual Studio Code. This will take you to the installation page for the extension; just click on Install to install the extension to Visual Studio Code. You may also need to install the Jupyter extension in a similar way. Once you install the Python and Jupyter extensions, you should never need to do this again.

Python VS Code Extension Jupyter VS Code Extension

To edit and run the Jupyter Notebook, open the notebook in Visual Studio Code with the Python and Jupyter extensions.