Online Python Tutoring JC-PD LLC

Affordable Online Python Tutoring Help by a Physics PhD + postdoc / Math BS with 20 years of professional programming experience

Python Professional Help

$40/hr for students   Tutoring Policies

$65/hr for businesses (industry, research labs, and private businesses for software engineering consulting/training/scientific programming/tutoring.)

In sessions, concepts are explained clearly if there is a need. Otherwise, practice is the focus. Active learning is best in any subject. Material and concepts are presented after a relevant practical problem is chosen. Then the required knowledge and problem solving approach and methods are presented. Teaching strategy in test taking is beneficial to many students. Teaching error-free programming techniques is valuable in CS. The approach to physics and math problems should also be an error-free one. In all technical subjects, problem solving should be accomplished in small steps, checking the consequences of each before proceeding.

I want to help students learn problematic material. Beating fear of success is possible through sustained small successes. The only real teaching/tutoring goal is to teach a student everything the teacher/tutor knows so that the teacher/tutor is no longer necessary.

Python Tutoring

Python is a mathematically oriented OO language, although one can program anything almost with it. Its new development comes from a mathematician, who is the original author. There are many theoretical physicists and applied mathematicians who use python, and then there are the machine learning (ML) experts and data scientists too. The libraries used for ML and data science are not that difficult to use, but they are much more difficult to understand in detail. A top ML expert or data scientist should understand the python libraries for his/her area of work. Note that, for one to begin ML or Data Science, the beginning mathematical background is approximately a minor in mathematics. Even that background is not sufficient. One should certainly be competent in junior/senior-level courses in mathematical statistics, advanced applied calculus, and linear algebra.

Python is about as difficult to learn as Java. It does not use pointers, just as Java also does not. It does produce shorter code than Java, which may make python a bit simpler than Java. C/C++ is more difficult than python and Java. Object oriented python may be a bit more difficult than that in Java, especially if you already know Java. The syntax of Java is clearer than python's for classes in my opinion.

Like all programming languages, learning python requires a significant amount of personal practice. In tutoring, solving problems with python is emphasized, and programming strategies/techniques are presented. It is hoped that enough personal practice time will benefit the learner by ending the need for rote memorization of syntax or programming techniques.

For standard applications, python 3 is used, along with spyder or jupyter (if anaconda 3 is used). For data science, the prefered version of python is version 2, and the IDE jupyter is used, primarily (if anaconda 2 is used). Jupyter is much better for presentations of results of python calculations and plots using matplotlib. Anaconda facilitates the installation of libraries with a website devoted to that (for python 2 or 3).

There are many IDEs for python, and most are free or have free versions. Anaconda and pycharm are probably the most popular. Coding python for most applications is reasonable, and the language itself lends toward shorter code as compared to the "C languages" and Java. Still, coding ML and data science can be very difficult, especially when one does not know the mathematical details of the utilized libraries. For many applications, python is a fairly fun language to use.

I have been tutoring python since late 2019 or early 2020. I do like python since it is programmer friendly. I did translate a significant MATLAB program into python for an electrical engineering graduate student. The last version utilized classes. Since then, I have been regularly tutoring python. Some students were in HS, while other were college students or non-students simply interested in improving their python programming skills.

I am a former part-time software engineering consultant using C++ for a US industry in PA (2019). Also, in industry, I have 6 years of experience as a programmer/software engineer. I have 12 years of programming experience in my scientific research at Wash U School of Medicine in St. Louis. Through my dissertation and postdoc, I have 5 years of FORTRAN programming experience. At Wash U School of Medicine, I have 8 years of part-time UNIX system administrator experience.

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