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03-Why-use-Jupyter-Notebooks?.md

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Title Teaching Exercises Question Objectives Activity Keypoints
Why use Jupyter Notebooks
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Why use Jupyter Notebooks?
Understand why notebooks are used and who uses them
Talk about a variety of applications
Notebooks are used by all kinds of people, for lots of different reasons

Why use Jupyter Notebooks?

Even if you think you don't use computational methods, if you use Excel or even advanced search terms in a library catalogue or on Google, you are already doing it!

Jupyter Notebooks help you to perform some tasks really quickly. They are great for exploration in data analysis, presenting results, and sharing ideas You can experiment and work on large datasets without having to download them. Jupyter Notebooks are also great at performing rapid visualisations that you can test out, change and share easily. They are also freely available and you can use them in a normal browser (no license fee!).

Jupyter Notebooks offer a way to experiment with data processing without having to be a programmer. You can learn from others’ efforts and understand their data and research processes. Because you work in code blocks (not whole scripts) they help you learn how to code just enough for you to do what you need to do.

The notebook environment lets you test out calculations and visualisations that highlight important data points in a way that is immediate and easy to understand. Notebooks permit a quick set of steps: you can document and run code then look at code outcome, e.g. equations or visualisations, all in one place.

Importantly, they also help you keep track of your methods so you have a record of how you performed an analysis and came up with a conclusion. They are interactive and provide instant feedback, which is helpful for those just starting out.

What are Jupyter Notebooks used for?

Notebooks are being used in an ever-increasing number of domains, by a large range of researchers. Currently the main fields using Jupyter Notebooks are the following:

  • Programming and Computer Science
  • Statistics, Machine Learning and Data Science
  • Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology
  • Earth Science and Geo-Spatial data
  • Linguistics and Text Mining
  • Signal Processing
  • Engineering Education

Activity

More humanities researchers are adopting Jupyter Notebooks as part of their research practice. Take a look at the following and discuss how Jupyter Notebooks might be useful in different fields: