On Wednesday, April 16, organizers for PyIU wrapped up their final event of the Spring 2025 semester with their Advanced Python Workshop. Python is the most widely used programming language in the physical sciences and has become an indispensable tool in astronomy. Along with covering the fundamentals of the language, this workshop provided STEM students at IU with the opportunity to learn more complex, focused topics in Python programming, including Advanced Plotting, Data Fitting, Statistics, Machine Learning, and Astronomy Packages. Throughout the 90-minute workshop, instructors shared their expertise on these topics and how they implement them in their astronomy and physics research.
This workshop followed PyIU's Spring 2025 Python Crash Course, which took place on March 5. This crash course featured a live coding demo that was more beginner-friendly and aimed at students with little to no experience in programming or using Python. Specifically, students incrementally learned the fundamental components of the language, including Variables, Lists, Loops, Logic, Functions, and Plotting, while producing a key plot in astronomy: the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram. Students engaged in authentic science during this crash course as they built their diagrams from real data for the NGC 2420 stellar cluster (data acquired by IU Astronomy graduate students!).
Overall, both events were a great success thanks to the hard work of our astronomy and physics student volunteers. All PyIU materials, including for the crash course and advanced workshop, are available on GitHub here: https://github.com/BrandonRadzom/pyiu/tree/main.
PyIU Crash Course
The College of Arts