Notes from 2016

[takluyver]

• Introduction to Jupyter and IPython is too lengthy, e.g. I never actually use most of the history variables like _i. We should decide what is actually useful for people to know rather than talking through lots of obscure IPython features.
• Some people hadn't programmed before the course, so they've had a day's combined Python and git training the day before they come to our workshop. The examples need to ramp up the difficulty more gradually. I think we should also accept that we're teaching people a little bit of Python, matplotlib, pandas... etc. - it might not be in the title, but it's more useful than a bunch of obscure details about IPython.
• We tried to push an update after people had already cloned the material; this gets confusing for people who open the updated notebook and then try to pull it and get a conflict. Resolving that is tricky enough that it probably doesn't teach git novices anything useful.

[Carreau]

Thanks @takluyver for the feedback !

[takluyver]

• The nbconvert template exercise felt like we were really dropping people in the deep end: Jinja templates involve some concepts that people haven't come across before, and the special syntax for Latex templates only further confuses matters.
• We have no comprehensive docs and only a few understandable examples to point people to for custom templates. We have the description of the block structure, but no mention of what variables are available at any point in the template.
• Latex exercises are awkward because we can't expect everyone to have Latex installed to render output to PDF, and reading raw Latex code is a pain.
• For people new to programming, the notion of functions as objects that can be passed in to other functions (like interact()) takes a bit of getting used to.
• FloatSlider widgets are quite prone to floating point errors, which distract people.

[takluyver]

We sent round a user survey to the participants. So far, 8 of about 13 participants have responded:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1XcEnDeOOXAL0O4gdnvb7SGiy4kUnvfOqZfnDARIT7Xs/edit#responses

(I'm not exactly sure about the sharing settings - let me know if you can't see that)

We asked people about the content and balance of the four topics we taught: Jupyter/IPython overview, widgets, notebook format and nbconvert, and ipyparallel. Summarising the results:

• For each topic, most respondents felt that it was useful and pitched at about the right level.
• Some people thought that the overview was too basic and the ipyparallel section too advanced.
• On the balance of topics, there was a slant towards wanting more information on the overview and widgets, but not strongly. People seemed overall happy with the amount of time we spent on notebook documents and ipyparallel - or at least, people wanting more info were roughly balanced by people wanting less.

Suggestions:

• One person would have like to hear about Reveal and RISE
• "A suggestion for the future could be a final project at the end of the workshop aiming to a create control panel (GUI) with multiple widgets and controls over variables and apply all that students learnt during the workshop. That could be used as a reference for the student to build their own in the future."
• One felt the bit on custom nbconvert templates was superfluous. I think it's worth mentioning, but getting people to do an exercise on it may be too much.

[Carreau]

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1XcEnDeOOXAL0O4gdnvb7SGiy4kUnvfOqZfnDARIT7Xs/edit#responses

I get directed to fill-in the form when I click on that.

[takluyver]

There's no 'viewing' option to share the results of a Google Form - anyone who can see the results can also edit the form. I don't want to open it up to public editing, but I'm happy to add anyone who I recognise as an editor (obviously don't edit it!).

Here's a link giving read-only access to the spreadsheet of results: it's not convenient to look at, but it has all the same info.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Ix62fFXcx75DWGaqINQLSHEXKANfGyH9GwWGafvLCko/edit?usp=sharing

[minrk]

I think we have to share the form with people individually to see the nice results view. I added you and a few others, but I suppose the spreadsheet is the only truly public option.