Carpentries: Plotting and Programming with Python

Date and Time: 9:00AM–4:00PM, Friday, October 23, 2026Location: Tierney Room (121A), Bing Wing, Green Library & Virtual (zoom link provided upon registration)Instructors:Katie Frey (Data Curator for Programmatic Access)Zach Lannes (Engineering Librarian for Research & Teaching Support)Alex Threlkeld (Mathematics, Statistics & Computational Sciences Librarian)Jooyeon Hahm (Head of Data Science Training & Consultation)This workshop is an introduction to programming in Python for people with little or no previous programming experience who want to use Python for data analysis and visualization.

Working entirely within Jupyter notebooks via Google Colab, learners progress from the absolute fundamentals—running code, assigning variables, understanding data types and type conversion, and calling built-in functions and help—through importing and using libraries from Python's standard library and beyond.

The course then centers on real-world data work using the Pandas library and the Gapminder global development dataset, teaching learners to read tabular CSV data into DataFrames, inspect and summarize it, and create plots with matplotlib.

Later episodes build core programming skills including lists, for loops, conditionals, looping over data sets, and writing functions, with scheduled coffee and lunch breaks structuring a full-day, hands-on format reinforced throughout by practice challenges and reflection exercises. Please register to attend. Registration is open exclusively to current Stanford affiliates and is offered on a first-come, first-served basis.

In-person attendees should bring their Stanford ID or a valid government-issued ID for library access, along with their laptop. Virtual attendees will receive a Zoom link upon registration.