Introduction to Coding and Data Analysis for Scientists

Week 2: Booleans and Conditionals

Today’s Lecture

• Lecture 2: Booleans and Conditionals
  • Recap: Accessing Noteable
  • Recap: Booleans
  • If statements
  • Practical

Why learn to code?

Whichever course you are taking you will likely need to write code at some point - Chemistry - Analyse experimental data - Automate repetitive calculations - Model chemical reactions/simulations

Why learn to code?

Whichever course you are taking you will likely need to write code at some point - Physics - Simulate physical systems - Process experimental measurements - Visualise complex phenomena

Why learn to code?

Whichever course you are taking you will likely need to write code at some point - Data Science - Clean and organise datasets - Apply statistical methods and machine learning - Communicate insights with visualisations

Recap: Accessing Noteable

• Open Blackboard
• Go to Introduction to Coding and Data Analysis for Scientists 2025
• Click Unit Information and Resources
• Open Noteable
  • Make sure Jupyter Classic (Legacy) is selected.
  • Click Start
• Click +GitRepo
• Paste into Git Repository URL: git@github.com:TomMaullin/SCIF10002-2025.git
• Press clone

Recap: Last Time

• Last week, we started looking at the Python language
• We saw that variables can be assigned values using =
• To display the values of variables we can use print

Recap: Last Time

• Variables have their own Data Types

  • Strings are sequences of characters
  • Floats are decimals, Ints are integers
  • Booleans are True/False values
  • Lists are ordered groups of items

• We spent some time looking at various things we could do with some of these data types

Recap: Booleans

• A Boolean is variable that can be either True or False

• Booleans represent logical statements.

• For instance, we saw an example where:

  • cat_is_black represented the sentence “The cat is black”
  • cat_has_four_legs represented the sentence “The cat has four legs”

• We can use logical operators to combine Boolean statements

  • cat_is_black and cat_has_four_legs represented the sentence “The cat is black and has four legs”

Recap: Booleans

If Statements

• We should be starting to feel comfortable with giving a computer instructions via code
• But sometimes, we don’t want every line to run automatically
• Instead, we may want Python to act only when a specific condition is true
• This is where the if statement comes in…

If Statements

• An if statement lets you run code when a Boolean statement is True

• Indentation is important!
  • Python tells what is in the body by looking at which code is indented!
• Often we don’t bother naming the boolean, and instead write it directly inside the if statement

If Statements

• We can also tell the if statement what to do when the Boolean is False by using else!

If Statements

• An elif (short for else if) can be added to check more extra conditions.

• Multiple elif can be added.

Practical

• We now move over to Python
• Please open week_02_home.ipynb
• For the rest of today, you must work through a Python notebook
• You have a choice of one of three options
  • Option 1: Beginner - If Statements
  • Option 2: Intermediate - Match Statements
  • Option 3: Advanced - Conditional Expressions and Lazy Evaluation