A Numpy-First Approach to Teaching CS1 to Natural Science Students

Elizabeth Patitsas
2015 Proceedings of the 2015 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education - ITiCSE '15  
Numpy (Numerical Python) and Scipy (Scientific Python) are Python libraries for doing numerical/scientific work that are popular with research scientists, as they allow for matrixbased computation in Python. I report on my initial experiences teaching a CS1 in Python to natural/social science students using a "numpy-first" approach. Students were taught about numpy arrays and matrix manipulations before learning lists and loops. I found this approach helped this audience appreciate the
more » ... of CS to their own fields, and possibly better learn topics such as logic and file I/O.
doi:10.1145/2729094.2754861 dblp:conf/iticse/Patitsas15 fatcat:7epzmh32lre4lifrhqzajc3ar4