Community Data Science Workshops (Fall 2014)/Reflections: Difference between revisions

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 == Session 0: Python Setup ==
-The goal of this session was to get users setup with Python and starting to learn some of the basics. We changed the curriculum enormously to use Continuum's Anaconda instead of Python directly from [http://python.org python.org]. The result was staggering. Not a ''single person'' reported "many problems with set-up" (i.e., respondants reported either "no problems" or a "few problems.")
+The goal of this session was to get users setup with Python and starting to learn some Python basics. We changed the curriculum originally used by BPW enormously to use Continuum's Anaconda instead of Python directly from [http://python.org python.org]. The result was staggering. Not a ''single person'' reported "many problems with set-up" (i.e., respondants reported either "no problems" or a "few problems.")
-Anaconda was key to smoothyness compared to the first workshop series and addressed most of our setup and path issues. That said, we had several major concerns:
+That said, we had several major concerns:
-* Anaconda is not free software or open source
+* Anaconda is not free software/open source.
-* Anaconda does not support Python 3 which we'd like to move to
+* Anaconda does not support Python 3 which we'd like to move to.
-* One studdent had a home directory in Chinese which caused the Anaconda installation to fail at a very late stage. This was eventually fixed by a mentor who changed the path.
+* Anaconda seems to have at least some remaining i10n bugs. For example, one studdent had a home directory set to a Chinese string which caused the Anaconda installation to fail at a late stage. This was eventually fixed by a mentor who changed the path by hand.
-Additionally, we moved the Windows curriculum from away from <code>cmd</code> to using Powershell. This was a huge benefit because it meant that <code>ls</code> works and the rest of the curriculum can converge. The only concerns were:
+Additionally, we moved the Windows curriculum from away from <code>cmd</code> to using Powershell. This was an huge and unqualified improvement because it meant that <code>ls</code> works and the rest of the curriculum could converge. The only concerns were that Powershell is not installed on Windows XP although ''not a single student had Windows XP''.
-* Powershell is not installed on Windows XP although ''not a single student had Windows XP''
 Changes for next time include:
-* Because it was less successful, we can deemphasize recruiting mentors to the Friday night session.
+* Because it was less necessary, we will deemphasize recruiting mentors to the Friday night session. Many folks were standing around.
-* Because Powershell was successful, we're going to try to create a single consolidated set of installation instructions for Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux!
+* Because Powershell was successful, we're going to try to create a single consolidated set of installation instructions for Windows, Mac OSX, and GNU/Linux
-* We will make it clear to mentors whether participants should self-report they’d completed the steps or whether the mentor should verify that the steps were all taken. In future, email mentors ahead of time to let them know.
+* We will make it more clear to mentors whether participants should self-report they’d completed the steps or whether the mentor should verify that the steps were all taken (the latter). In future, we will email mentors ahead of time to let them know.
+* In a related issue, not everybody loves the checkout step. Maybe there's a way we can make it more fun?
-* We need to do a better job of modelling stticky notes during lectures early on.
+* We need to do a better job of modelling sticky notes so folks use them more effectively.
-* The sticky notes we bought were small and ambiguous color. We should get bright red sticky notes next time.
+* The sticky notes we bought were small and ambiguous color. We should get large red sticky notes next time.
-* Set up/arrange/select the space to facilitate better circulation of mentors.
-When mentors can circulate easily things are better for participants.
+* We should set up/arrange/select space to facilitate better circulation of mentors. Generally, we found that when mentors can circulate easily things are better for participants.
-* We are going to try writing installation instructions that do not rely on Anaconda so people have a fully open source option.
+* We are going to try writing additional installation instructions that do not rely on Anaconda so people have a fully open source option.
-* Once again, not a single person outside of mentors ran GNU/Linux. We should strongly consider how much effort we want to put into maintaining this part of the curriculum.
+* Once again, not a single person outside of the mentor group ran GNU/Linux. We should strongly consider how much effort we want to put into maintaining this part of the curriculum which, to date, has never been used.
-* We should move to Python 3 to try to address lingering unicode issues. We should try to do this for the next session.
+* We want to seriously investigate the possibility of moving to Python 3 to try to address lingering unicode issues.
-* Not everybody loves the checkout step. Maybe there's a way we can make it more fun?
-We also had [[Community Data Science Workshops (Fall 2014)/Reflections#Mentorship|a bunch of general feedback on how we could improvement mentorship]] that is particular relevant to the earlier session
+We also had [[Community Data Science Workshops (Fall 2014)/Reflections#Mentorship|a bunch of general feedback on how we could improvement mentorship]] that is particularly relevant to this session.
 == Session 1: Introduction to Python ==