Introduction to Programming with Scientific Applications (Spring 2026)

Below is the course plan for the course. For each lecture is stated the topic, the relevant literature, the slides used, videos for watching at your own speed, the exercises connected to the lecture, and handins related to the content of the lecture. The exercises should be covered in the subsequent exercise classes. Due dates for the handins for your exercise class can be found on Brightspace.

All code used on slides and used for making the figures on the slides can be found in this zip file code.zip. All slides concatenated as a single pdf file can be found as all-slides.pdf (also available in the course menu).

[G] refers to optional reading in the textbook by John V. Guttag, Introduction to Computation and Programming Using Python - With Application Computational Modeling and Understanding Data, 3rd Edition. 664 pages. MIT Press, 2021. The book is not curriculum in the course.

Note: Slides and course plan will be updated as the course progresses.

Week
5	Monday January 26
	Semester starts Introduction to Python
	Slides	introduction.pdf | introduction.pptx
	Literature	[G] 1, 2.1
	Exercises	lecture 1
	Wednesday January 28
	Python basics variables, int, float, str, type conversion, assignment, print(), help(), type() Control structures if-elif-else, while-break-continue, input()
	Slides	basics.pdf | basics.pptx control.pdf | control.pptx
	Videos	Basics 55:27  Control 32:09
	Literature	[G] 2.2, 2.3, 2.5, 2.6
	Exercises	lecture 2 handin 1
6	Monday February 2
	Basic operations None, bool, basic operations, strings Exercise classes start
	Slides	operations.pdf | operations.pptx
	Videos	Operations 1:02:04
	Literature	[G] 2.4, 5.5
	Exercises	lecture 3
	Wednesday February 4
	Lists Syntax, operations, copy.deepcopy Control structures while-else, for-loops, for-break-continue-else, range
	Slides	lists.pdf | lists.pptx
	Videos	Lists 1:00:04
	Literature	[G] 5.2, 5.3, 5.4, 5.5
	Exercises	lecture 4 handin 2
7	Monday February 9
	Tuples and lists tuples, lists, mutability, list comprehension, for-if, for-for, list(), any(), all(), enumerate(), zip()
	Slides	tuple.pdf | tuple.pptx
	Videos	Tuples 50:13  Orientation test 11:38
	Literature	[G] 5.1, 5.3, 5.5
	Exercises	lecture 5
	Wednesday February 11
	Dictionaries and sets dict, set, frozenset, dictionary comprehension, set comprehension, collections, deque, namedtuple, Counter
	Slides	dictionaries.pdf | dictionaries.pptx
	Videos	Dictionaries 49:51  Handins 3-4 5:11
	Literature	[G] 5.6, 5.7, 5.8, 12.3
	Exercises	lecture 6 handin 3
8	Monday February 16
	Functions functions, return, scoping, arguments, keyword arguments, *, **, global variables 10.15 Meeting with class representatives
	Slides	functions.pdf | functions.pptx
	Videos	Functions 58:04
	Literature	[G] 4, 6.3
	Exercises	lecture 7
	Wednesday February 18
	Recursion symbol table, stack frames
	Slides	recursion.pdf | recursion.pptx
	Videos	Recursion 46:29
	Literature	[G] 6.1, 6.2
	Exercises	lecture 8 handin 4
9	Monday February 23
	Recursion and iteration algorithm examples No physical lecture - video only
	Slides	recursion_iteration.pdf | recursion_iteration.pptx
	Videos	Recursion and iteration 57:43
	Literature	[G] 3, 12.1, 12.2
	Exercises	lecture 9 handin 5
	Wednesday February 25
	Functions as objects lambda, higher-order functions, map, filter, reduce No physical lecture - video only
	Slides	lambda.pdf | lambda.pptx
	Videos	Lambda 44:05
	Literature	[G] 4.4, 12.2.2
	Exercises	lecture 10
10	Monday March 2
	Object oriented programming classes, objects, self, construction, encapsulation
	Slides	classes.pdf | classes.pptx
	Videos	Classes 1:11:42
	Literature	[G] 10.1, 10.3.0
	Exercises	lecture 11
	Wednesday March 4
	Class hierarchies inheritance, method overriding, super, multiple inheritance
	Slides	hierarchies.pdf | hierarchies.pptx
	Videos	Class hierarchies 44:20
	Literature	[G] 10.2
	Exercises	lecture 12 handin 6
11	Monday March 9
	Exceptions and file input/output try-raise-except-finally, Exception, control flow, match-case, file open/read/write, sys.stdin, sys.stdout, sys.stderr, context manager
	Slides	exceptions.pdf | exceptions.pptx
	Videos	Exceptions 28:51  Files 20:13  Sudoku 15:45
	Literature	[G] 7.3, 9.1, 9.2
	Exercises	lecture 13
	Wednesday March 11
	Documentation, testing and debugging docstring, defensive programming, assert, test driven developement, assertions, testing, unittest, doctest, debugger, coverage, static type checking, mypy
	Slides	testing.pdf | testing.pptx
	Videos	Testing 48:44  Mypy 13:32
	Literature	[G] 4.2, 8, 9.3
	Exercises	lecture 14 handin 7
12	Monday March 16
	Decorators @, @property, @functools.total_ordering, dataclasses
	Slides	decorators.pdf | decorators.pptx
	Videos	Decorators 54:37
	Exercises	lecture 15
	Wednesday March 18
	Dynamic programming memoization, decorator memoized/functools.cache, systematic subproblem computation
	Slides	dynamic_programming.pdf | dynamic_programming.pptx
	Videos	Dynamic programming 56:46  Coding competitions 10:47
	Literature	[G] 14.1, 15.1, 15.2
	Exercises	lecture 16 handin 8
13	Monday March 23
	Visualization and optimization Matplotlib, Jupyter, scipy.optimize.minimize
	Slides	optimization.pdf | optimization.pptx
	Videos	Matplotlib 1:03:40  Jupyter 26:35  SciPy minimize 29:47
	Literature	[G] 13
	Exercises	lecture 17
	Wednesday March 25
	Multi-dimensional data NumPy, matrix multiplication, @, numpy.linalg.solve, numpy.polyfit
	Slides	numpy.pdf | numpy.pptx
	Videos	Numpy 42:09  Polyfit 6:12  Numpy matplotlib 15:27
	Literature	[G] 13.2
	Exercises	lecture 18
14	Monday March 30 - Monday April 6
	Easter break - no teaching
15	Tuesday April 7 - Wednesday April 8
	No lectures and exercise classes
16	Monday April 13
	Linear programming scipy.optimize.linprog pagerank.ipynb max-flow.ipynb
	Slides	linear_programming.pdf | linear_programming.pptx
	Videos	Linprog 6:19  Maxflow 10:05  Pagerank 22:17
	Exercises	lecture 19 handin 9
	Wednesday April 15
	Generators and iterators yield, __iter__, __next__, measuring memory usage
	Slides	generator.pdf | generator.pptx
	Videos	Iterators 38:26  Generators 30:04  Memory usage 9:27
	Literature	[G] 10.3.1
	Exercises	lecture 20 handin 10
17	Monday April 20
	Modules and packages from-import-as, __name__, "__main__", heapq
	Slides	modules.pdf | modules.pptx
	Videos	Modules 24:28  Heapq 8:51
	Literature	[G] 7.1, 7.2
	Exercises	lecture 21
	Wednesday April 22
	Working with text file formats (CSV, Json, XML, Excel), regular expressions (module re), finditer
	Slides	text.pdf | text.pptx
	Videos	File formats 39:47  Regular expressions 17:59  Lindenmeyer systems 14:10
	Exercises	lecture 22
18	Monday April 27
	Relational data SQL, SQLite, pandas pandas.ipynb
	Slides	pandas.pdf | pandas.pptx
	Videos	SQLite 29:23  Pandas 34:23
	Literature	[G] 23
	Exercises	lecture 23
	Wednesday April 29
	Clustering k-means, scipy.cluster.vq.kmeans, DBSCAN, neural networks
	Slides	clustering.pdf | clustering.pptx
	Videos	Clustering 27:25  DBSCAN 11:11  Neural networks 15:56
	Literature	[G] 25
	Exercises	lecture 24
19	Monday May 4
	Graphical user interfaces (GUI) Tkinter, qt
	Slides	gui.pdf | gui.pptx
	Videos	Tkinter 50:37
	Exercises	lecture 25
	Wednesday May 6
	Java vs Python
	Slides	java.pdf | java.pptx
	Videos	Java 1:03:03
	Exercises	lecture 26
20	Monday May 11
	Follow up on course evaluation, discussion of exam
	Slides	exam.pdf | exam.pptx
	Exercises	lecture 27
	Wednesday May 13
	No lecture
	Wednesday May 13
	Hollyday (Ascension Day) - no teaching
	Friday May 15
	Last day of semester
22	Sunday May 31
	Project deadline 23:59
	June
	Questions & answers sessions
25	Saturday June 20
	Exam