Improvements for next year(s)

[FinniganIK]

• For notebook 3A using Pandas, change from merging dataframes to something like:

df[rolling_site] = df[site].rolling(window=5, min_periods=2).mean()

• Swap out b-value example for a more simple rolling average example, e.g. GPS displacement

[calum-chamberlain]

• Notebook 3B ends with unexplained code that should be explained or removed.

[calum-chamberlain]

• It would be good to change the notebooks so that the cells are a little more standalone - some students ran into issues executing things out of order.

[FinniganIK]

• Add seaborn density plots example to 3b

[FinniganIK]

• Make 'extras' notebook for more challenging examples e.g. Fourier analysis (end of 3b) and rolling b-value (end of 3a)

[calum-chamberlain]

Notes from Ash and Jessie:

• It could be really helpful to have an example of how to plot vertical and horizontal lines in matplotlib.
• It could be helpful to show an example of using a for loop and a function nested within one another. Cause I've been doing that heaps in my codes and it took me ages to figure it out.
• I don't understand what classes are at all... and I'm not sure if we need to know what they are.
• It would be really helpful to have an extra section which shows how to edit a dataframe. Stuff like removing/adding rows and columns, resetting the index, and loading in specific columns of a txt file. And some more examples of slicing the dataframe could be useful because we use it all the time.
• Turn interactive plotting back on
• Turn tag view off on all cells.

[calum-chamberlain]

• Make it explicit in 2B that you need to select a region in NZ, or provide a global earthquake catalogue.

[FinniganIK]

• Module 3A, renaming columns for a second time, I don't understand why

kaikoura = get_geonet_quakes(
    min_latitude=-43.12, max_latitude=-41.15,
    min_longitude=172.37, max_longitude=174.95,
    start_time=datetime.datetime(2010, 1, 1),
    min_magnitude=2)

# Rename those columns
kaikoura = kaikoura.rename(
    columns={" magnitude": "magnitude",
             " latitude": "latitude",
             " depth": "depth"})

print(f"Downloaded {len(kaikoura)} earthquakes")

[FinniganIK]

• Module 3B, the seaborn section works better without %matplotlib notebook
• Module 3B, try to suppress or avoid UserWarnings in PairGrid

[calum-chamberlain]

• Include reading of excel sheets - this requires an extra package install (openpyxl)
• Include skipping rows and footer - the students have to do this in their first data assignment and most of the questions that I have had have been about loading their assignment data which have not been formatted as csv.
• dropna and fillna methods are helpful for the assignment as well

[calum-chamberlain]

• Add example plotting NZ Active Fault Database (needs a way to download the NZAFD...) - note terms of service require only plotting at 1:250k...

[calum-chamberlain]

• Introduce how to read Python error messages in module 1B - make it clear that errors are okay and to be expected, and error messages are there to help you.

[calum-chamberlain]

Module 2B - downloading earthquakes notes that you should see the Kaikōura earthquake, but for 2023 the time window downloaded does not include the Kaikōura earthquake - update the dates!

Also show the students how to cope with too much data requested!