Book Description

This book introduces computational data analysis in biology, using the free and popular programming language python 3. The book targets undergraduate and graduate students in biology with an interest in computational techniques, but could also be of interest to students in other scientific disciplines such as biochemistry, environmental sciences and physics. No prior programming experience is required -- this book is intended for the motivated novice! Readers will learn to load and analyze data and produce professional visualizations. The mathematical content is kept to a bare minimum. Examples and exercises are drawn from a wide spectrum across biology, such as epidemiology, ecology, conservation biology, neuroscience, evolution, genetics, genomics and microbiology. Many exercises use realistic datasets published in the scientific literature, such as bacterial genome sequences, animal GPS tracking data, population time series and biodiversity inventories. References to the scientific literature are provided throughout.