Topics in Introductory Programming (104) is designed to give a general introduction to programming as related to data analysis across many fields. Currently there are versions of this class at Haverford in Linguistics, Social Science, Chemistry, Physics and Astronomy. In all of these classes students will be introduced to standard introductory programming imperative and object oriented techniques as well as data structures necessary to create efficient and understandable algorithmic solutions to problems. Data for analysis will be drawn from a single discipline that will vary per semester, forming a theme for topical study. Topical investigations will include the ethics of data use in that field, how data is commonly generated and used, and implementation of important discipline-specific algorithms.

The version of 104 upon which you are gazing is oriented toward the discipline of Physics and Astronomy. In particular we learn techniques that will be valuable for physicists and astronomers such as curve fitting, working with large public data sets, plotting, SQL queries, and numerical integration.