Stories on The Carpentries

The Strategic Value of Library Carpentry and The Carpentries to Research Libraries

Wed, 22 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

The Data Science Community Newsletter, a helpful resource by Laura Noren and Brad Stanger, helps us track all the data science initiatives sweeping through higher ed. Brown, Harvard, NYU, Stanford, UC Irvine, UIUC, University of Michigan, and others have launched data science initiatives in the past few years and have been announced in each newsletter.

University of Oregon Libraries and Oregon State University Libraries Team Up to Teach First Library Carpentry Workshop in Oregon

Mon, 20 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Jonathan Cain, Sarah Seymore, Steven Van Tuyl, Clara Llebot, Ryan Wick, Chris Erdmann

On March 16 and March 23, the University of Oregon Libraries and Oregon State University Libraries teamed up to teach the first Library Carpentry workshops in the state of Oregon, which were open to all Orbis Cascade Alliance members. These workshops were intended to help people working in library- and information-related roles in the Northwest improve their competencies and efficiencies through better understanding of the structure and organization data, automating repetitive, error prone tasks, and maintaining and analysing sustainable and reusable data.

Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me About Scientific Computing

Tue, 26 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

When I set out on my path into neuroscience, the idea of scientific computing was not even something that came up in passing. However, with little warning, I started spending my days at the computer writing code to analyse brain data.

Cleaning neuroimaging data is a multi-step process and I wanted to bring out the most from the data. To do that, I thought, would require using the best bits from a slew of neuroimaging preprocessing tools. Some were better at removing extraneous noise, while others were better at image morphing. But entering the commands one by one was tedious and error-prone and the formats for the different functions were not always compatible. There had to be a better way. So, writing some kind of code became my only option.

How Software Carpentry Helped Me Write a Paper

Tue, 19 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

A paper I wrote titled Increasing the Efficiency of a Thermionic Engine Using a Negative Electron Affinity Collector was recently published in the Journal of Applied Physics. I found that applying some of the best practices advocated by the Software Carpentry project eliminated much of the drudgery and tedium which leads to manually induced error in developing the software and composing the manuscript. As a result, I was able to focus more on the scientific problems instead of on tedious bookkeeping-type issues.

Scientific Computing at AIMS

Sun, 15 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Close on the heels of another bootcamp in Madison, WI, for the past two weeks I had the pleasure of teaching a 30 hour scientific computing course at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) in Cape Town, South Africa. The course was an expansion and refactor of Software Carpentry material to fit the AIMS need. You can find the repository of source material here.

I could gush about how I fell in love with Cape Town, the unexpected preponderance of vegan cafes in Muizenberg, the sea, the sand, the mountains, and la dolce vita I am otherwise used to from Santa Barbara. I will not. AIMS is about the students. Let's examine them after a brief tour of AIMS itself.

Visualizing Nuclear Fuel Inventories

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I was working on characterizing the used nuclear fuel in the United States and needed to calculate the isotopic inventories for 174,000 fuel assemblies. This seemed like an overwhelming project and decided to see if using a database could help me. With the help of the online lessons from Software Carpentry I was able to write a Python script that would run the needed information and then store the results in a Sqlite database. I then used an open source tool RapidMiner to visual that data:

Three Years Later

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

It's not putting it too strongly to say that Software Carpentry changed my life.

That's where Software Carpentry came in. I had just about given up on learning to program, resigning myself to a lifetime of GUI-clicking and begging for help whenever more was needed. Then I got an email from a friend, forwarding some information about the course. Hallelujah! Finally, a course for beginners like me, which didn't assume any prior knowledge but also didn't talk down. The things I learned have opened countless doors for me. I can write my own code and understand code written by others, and I'm not afraid to learn new programming languages as needed. I even took a postdoc in a highly computational lab, which I would never have had the nerve to do if it weren't for Software Carpentry. Given my background and interests, I'll probably never be one of the really expert programmers in my field, but I don't need to be. I know more than enough to function independently, and more importantly, I know how to ask the experts for help, and I can understand their answers.