Python for Cognitive Science

An interactive workshop for incoming MSc Cognitive Science students: two Python refresher days followed by a Friday conversation about learning and expectations. The material prepares students for Advanced Cognitive Neuroscience, Natural Language Processing, and Data Science, Prediction and Forecasting.

Published booklet: https://sabszh.github.io/cogsci-python-workshop-book/

Student setup page: https://sabszh.github.io/cogsci-python-workshop-book/setup.html

Open the workshop files

Clone or download the repository, then open the repository folder—not an individual file—in VS Code. Student-facing material is organised as follows:

cogsci-python-workshop-book/
├── book/
├── notebooks/              # student notebooks — start here
│   ├── workshop_scripts/   # runnable examples and exercise scripts
│   ├── data/               # CSV and EEG files used by the exercises
│   ├── day1/               # Day 1 booklet chapters
│   └── day2/               # Day 2 booklet chapters
├── workshop-environment.yml
└── workshop-requirements.txt

In VS Code:

1. Select the workshop Python interpreter.
2. Open notebooks/ for notebook exercises.
3. Open book/workshop_scripts/ for editable .py activities.
4. Keep files in their folders so relative data paths continue to work.

Build locally

python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
python -m pip install -r requirements.txt
jupyter-book build book

Open book/_build/html/index.html after the build.

Publish with GitHub Pages

1. In Settings → Pages, select GitHub Actions as the source.
2. Push to main. The included workflow builds and deploys the book.

Content

• Day 1: environments, paths, objects, dictionaries, NumPy dimensions, and visualisation
• Day 2: functions, pandas, model workflows, NLP data structures, and an emotion-classification challenge
• Instructor slides
• Downloadable workshop scripts and sample data

Students install only workshop-requirements.txt. The root requirements.txt additionally contains the documentation build dependencies.

Workshop text and original material are licensed CC BY 4.0. The xkcd images in book/_static/cartoons/ are by Randall Munroe and are separately licensed CC BY-NC 2.5; each use is attributed in the book.