Edited by David Pennington, Friday, 18 Nov 2016, 12:56
In last week's blog I had the following section:
"Some of the notebook questions don't quite correspond to my code output. As an example, there is a comment -
# A quick inspection shows that we have one spurious row at the end the DataFrame.
# (The original spreadsheet has an entirely blank line after the Clinical Senate rows.)
Well, I have a blank line there in the spreadsheet itself but it doesn't appear in my dataframe! I took the point of view that I would just comment on this and not worry about it. Later, this appears:
# Finally remove the spurious space at the end of the 'One ' column name.
# Enter your code here.
I don't have that space so I have placed a comment in the box saying:
# I don't have a space at the end of the 'One' column name"
This was all rubbish!
First off, I couldn't address one of the headings. Guess which one? 'One', of course. It turned out that I was just looking at the screen word and not looking at the heading as seen by Pandas. When I checked, there was the space. It was easily got rid of but I did feel a little stupid. More was to come though. When I started looking at the Clinical Senate list I found that I had one too many rows. Oh, so I did have the empty row, except it wasn't empty - well not really. It did have an entry which had confused me and hidden its empty status. (I can't say any more as I will give away some part of the TMA). So, I did remove it. I now felt more than a little stupid. I felt very stupid. That error with the hidden space had cost me a couple of hours messing around because I couldn't address that column.
Anyway, I got that notebook out of the way and carried on with the TMA. At the same time, I started to read the Part 8. I was having a lot of trouble reading the course books as I was putting them on my iPad mini but the angle of reading at my desk was causing a lot of trouble with my neck. I applied to the DSA for a larger tablet that would allow me to read at a much better angle and distance. It seems that I didn't explain myself correctly as the request was refused. I bought myself a 10" Lenovo tablet and this has sorted out my problems with reading. It sits on the original tablet stand that the DSA supplied but that wouldn't hold my iPad mini. I am much more comfortable now with the reading part of the course.
Part 8 turned out to be mostly history for me. In 1980 I studied M352 - Computer Based Information Systems. I didn't finish this course - working as a foreign exchange trader in the City and four kids at home got in the way. However, I got about 4 months into it. It was mostly about relational databases so reading the background wasn't just history for me but memories. As it was, I rattled through the book and the reading of the references. I have ticked that one off.
So, I have half of one question left in the TMA 01. I have started ICMA 43 - ish - and have read all of the available course material. This should leave an easy couple of weeks without any study. It will give me time to go over the TMA. I am still worried that I am being too lightweight with the TMA. I have to get 40% on this assignment. I am hoping that the coding part will get me there with just a little help from the written parts. I am OK with the factual side but struggling to understand if my analysis and review of statements, etc. are up to scratch. Maybe I will discuss my fears with Joe, my tutor.
Week 8 - Well, I got that wrong!
In last week's blog I had the following section:
"Some of the notebook questions don't quite correspond to my code output. As an example, there is a comment -
# A quick inspection shows that we have one spurious row at the end the DataFrame.
# (The original spreadsheet has an entirely blank line after the Clinical Senate rows.)
Well, I have a blank line there in the spreadsheet itself but it doesn't appear in my dataframe! I took the point of view that I would just comment on this and not worry about it. Later, this appears:
# Finally remove the spurious space at the end of the 'One ' column name.
# Enter your code here.
I don't have that space so I have placed a comment in the box saying:
# I don't have a space at the end of the 'One' column name"
This was all rubbish!
First off, I couldn't address one of the headings. Guess which one? 'One', of course. It turned out that I was just looking at the screen word and not looking at the heading as seen by Pandas. When I checked, there was the space. It was easily got rid of but I did feel a little stupid. More was to come though. When I started looking at the Clinical Senate list I found that I had one too many rows. Oh, so I did have the empty row, except it wasn't empty - well not really. It did have an entry which had confused me and hidden its empty status. (I can't say any more as I will give away some part of the TMA). So, I did remove it. I now felt more than a little stupid. I felt very stupid. That error with the hidden space had cost me a couple of hours messing around because I couldn't address that column.
Anyway, I got that notebook out of the way and carried on with the TMA. At the same time, I started to read the Part 8. I was having a lot of trouble reading the course books as I was putting them on my iPad mini but the angle of reading at my desk was causing a lot of trouble with my neck. I applied to the DSA for a larger tablet that would allow me to read at a much better angle and distance. It seems that I didn't explain myself correctly as the request was refused. I bought myself a 10" Lenovo tablet and this has sorted out my problems with reading. It sits on the original tablet stand that the DSA supplied but that wouldn't hold my iPad mini. I am much more comfortable now with the reading part of the course.
Part 8 turned out to be mostly history for me. In 1980 I studied M352 - Computer Based Information Systems. I didn't finish this course - working as a foreign exchange trader in the City and four kids at home got in the way. However, I got about 4 months into it. It was mostly about relational databases so reading the background wasn't just history for me but memories. As it was, I rattled through the book and the reading of the references. I have ticked that one off.
So, I have half of one question left in the TMA 01. I have started ICMA 43 - ish - and have read all of the available course material. This should leave an easy couple of weeks without any study. It will give me time to go over the TMA. I am still worried that I am being too lightweight with the TMA. I have to get 40% on this assignment. I am hoping that the coding part will get me there with just a little help from the written parts. I am OK with the factual side but struggling to understand if my analysis and review of statements, etc. are up to scratch. Maybe I will discuss my fears with Joe, my tutor.