DDMA Level III
Python Data Visualisation glossary
Every term this guide defines, A to Z, each with the chapter that teaches it. Open it when a word in a question is unfamiliar, and test yourself on it in the last week: cover the definition and say it in one sentence.
14 terms from the free first chapter
A
- Arithmetic operators and loops
+, -, *, /, // and % perform calculations; for and while loops repeat a block of code.
Taught in The Python language
B
- BeautifulSoup
A library for parsing HTML and XML, commonly used to extract specific data from a single scraped page.
Taught in The Python language
D
- Data types and variables
A variable holds a value of a given data type, int, float, str, bool, list, dict and others.
Taught in The Python language
I
- Input/output and import
input() reads user input, print() writes output, and import brings in a library's functionality.
Taught in The Python language
J
- Joining two lines
A backslash (\) at the end of a line continues a statement onto the next line.
Taught in The Python language
K
- Keywords and identifiers
Keywords are reserved words with fixed meaning (if, for, def); identifiers are the names a programmer chooses for variables and functions.
Taught in The Python language
M
- Multi-line statements and indentation
Statements can span multiple lines inside brackets without a backslash; indentation still defines each block's scope.
Taught in The Python language
P
- Python coding style
PEP 8 is Python's standard style guide, consistent naming, spacing and line length, for code that is easy for others to read.
Taught in The Python language
- Python line structure
Python uses indentation, not braces, to define blocks of code, so consistent indentation is not optional.
Taught in The Python language
- Python version, packages and datasets
Python 3 is the current standard; packages extend the language, and a dataset is the data a program works with.
Taught in The Python language
S
- scrapy
A framework for building web scrapers that extract data from websites at scale.
Taught in The Python language
- Script mode programming
Writing a full program in a .py file and running it, rather than typing commands one at a time.
Taught in The Python language
- Statements and comments
A statement is an instruction Python executes; a comment (starting with #) is ignored by Python, left for human readers.
Taught in The Python language
T
- Type conversion
Explicitly converting a value from one data type to another, e.g. int('5') to convert text to a whole number.
Taught in The Python language
The full glossary adds every term from the other 5 chapters, A to Z, each with the chapter that teaches it.