RECENT TOPICS

Fortune-Telling with Python: An Intro to Time Series Modeling By: Jonathan Balaban
Date: Aug. 10, 2017, 6 p.m.

Description: a pythonic tour of time series methodologies and packages, including ARIMA, seasonal models, and Markov approaches. Intermediate level with basic statistics and time data familiarity required. Bio: Jonathan Balaban is a senior data scientist, strategy consultant, and entrepreneur with ten years of private, public, and philanthropic experience. He currently teaches business professionals and leaders the art of impact-focused, practical data science at Metis.

YouTube logo
Python for Home-Ec By: Adam Forsyth
Date: June 8, 2017, 6 p.m.

Have you ever tried to make something with scrap wood, and wondered how to use it optimally? Do have a bunch of pickles and jams you made, and you want to eat them in an order that maximizes variety? These are real problems a co-worker of mine had, and we used Python to solve them. I'll show the data we started with, the solutions we came up with, and a bit of the computer science behind them. See some examples of how to think through problems and design your own algorithms to solve them.

YouTube logo
A Gentle Introduction to Context Managers By: Aly Sivji
Date: June 8, 2017, 6 p.m.

We've all used context managers provided by the Python Standard Library to read from/write to a file. Have you ever wondered what was happening underneath the hood when you used a with statement? This talk will explore context managers, discuss various use cases, and show you how to implement a context manager to manage MongoDB connections.

YouTube logo
Python for mathematical visualization: a four-dimensional case study By: David Dumas
Date: May 11, 2017, 6 p.m.
This is a talk about creating pictures of a mathematical object---specifically, a 4-dimensional fractal "dust" that has been the subject of mathematical research in hyperbolic geometry since the 1980s. In the end this is accomplished using a little algebra, a little geometry, and a healthy dose of Python. That is, I will present a case study of using Python in several aspects of a mathematical visualization project, from the computation itself, to transforming and converting data, and finally for scripting the process of generating the images. Along the way I'll explain how Python's convenient idioms and containers (e.g. sets and set comprehensions) are a good fit for some of the algebraic and geometric questions that come up, how Scipy and Numpy enable fast numerical calculations, and how Python's strength as a language for scripting and automation allows easy orchestration of rendering of still images and frames of animations. The mathematical visualization project we describe is a collaboration with François Guéritaud (Université de Lille).
Letsencrypt with Python Webapps By: Joe Jasinski
Date: May 11, 2017, 6 p.m.
In-browser encryption is more important now than ever. When building modern web-apps, encryption is a necessity. This talk will detail how you can secure your Python-based projects with Letsencrypt, a free certificate authority available to anyone. It will cover the Python-based tools available to configure Letsencrypt and an example project utilizing it.
Build a Game: HTML5 sockets + Phaser + flask
Date: May 11, 2017, 6 p.m.
Brian will show how to use flask and Python to power a browser based HTML5 game over sockets. Events can be pushed to the browser or pushed to flask from the browser. Great starter for those who are interested in event driven programming.
How a Study Group Can Help a ML Beginner Learn Deep Learning By: Apurva Naik
Date: April 13, 2017, 7:30 p.m.
Deep learning has never been accessible to people with limited ML experience. All over the internet, beginners only come across discouragement, exclusion and elitism when they express an interest in doing deep learning. A recently released MOOC, fast.ai is specifically designed for those with some coding experience. The MOOC's creators use a hands-on approach of teaching that focuses on coding first and understanding later. I will talk about the balancing act between work, family and passion projects, how my study buddies help me stay on track, and what we're doing to help others learn.
Trolling databases with Python! By: Loren Velasquez
Date: April 13, 2017, 7:35 p.m.
You are the data troll who allows what data can be pushed up. All data requests are in your hands but first you need to become an official data troll by getting your information in the data troll table (you need to be legit in the database or else it didn't happen). This is a super simple example of how Python can be friends with database, today we’ll look at Postgres!
Introduction to Project Magellan By: Ancy Phillip
Date: April 13, 2017, 7 p.m.
Day by day, the world is becoming more data driven, making data science extremely popular. Data Wrangling , Data Analysis form the two important stages in any Data Science problem and Entity Matching(EM) is extremely critical in the latter phase. EM has been a long-standing challenge in data management. Most current EM works focus only on developing matching algorithms. A solution to this, Magellan, is a new kind of EM systems, open sourced on top of the PyData eco-system. Magellan is novel in four important aspects. (1) It provides how-to guides that tell users what to do in each EM scenario, step by step. (2) It provides tools to help users do these steps; the tools seek to cover the entire EM pipeline, not just match- ing and blocking as current EM systems do. (3) Tools are built on top of the data analysis and Big Data stacks in Python, allowing Magellan to borrow a rich set of capabil- ities in data cleaning, IE, visualization, learning, etc. (4) Magellan provides a powerful scripting environment to fa- cilitate interactive experimentation and quick “patching” of the system. Magellan is used at Walmart Labs, Johnson Controls, Marshfield Clinic and as a teaching tool in UWM classes.
Python Software Foundation Update + how you can be involved! By: Lorena Mesa
Date: April 13, 2017, 8:35 p.m.
What's happening at the Python Software Foundation? Look no further Python Software Foundation Director Lorena Mesa will run through an update! Information about elections, a new PyCon organizers manual, the PSF Code of Conduct Committee will be briefly covered.