EDS 221 Day 1 AM

Course intro

August 10th, 2026

An image of two coral reefs. On the left, a healthy coral reef. On the right, a dead coral predated by a crown-of-thorns sea star.

What happened to this system?

What are the consequences for people and the environment?

Why are we talking about this in a programming class?

From data to understanding

With code, we go from this…

An image of a diver collecting data in a coral reef.

From data to understanding

…to this.

A figure showing coral reef cover changing over time.

Learning objectives

  • 🧠 Think like a computer scientist
    • 🌍 Represent real world data using computational data structures
    • 🤖 Interpret and design algorithms to solve problems
    • 🍄 Decompose complex problems into modular components
  • 🎨 Create like a computer scientist
    • 🔠 Read and write code using proper syntax
    • 🛠 Implement algorithms with control structures and functions
    • 👷 Manage coding projects using version control

Grading

  • 👍 Satisfactory / Unsatisfactory
    • No letter grades
  • ✅ Attendance
    • Expected every day.
    • But life happens! Let your instructors know about absences in advance when possible.
  • ✋ Participation
    • Active participation in all exercises expected.

Daily schedule

  • Morning session
    • Review previous day
    • New material
    • Session review
  • Afternoon session
    • New material
    • Session review
  • End-of-day session
    • Practice day’s material
  • Session activities
    • Pencil-and-paper exercises
    • Live-coding demos
    • Concept mapping
  • Expect a lot of:
    • Working in groups
    • Problem solving
    • Think first, draw second, type last

Have your coffee with typing club!

💻 💻 💻 Touch typing is a valuable skill for keeping up in class, and one you can develop.

But why practice alone?

☕ ☕ ☕ Join typing club 9:15-9:45, here in the NCEAS classroom. I’ll make the coffee (there will be tea, too), we’ll practice typing together.

Distribution of typing speeds

Course schedule

Week 1 Week 2
Day 1 - Code execution Day 6 - Data frames
Day 2 - Data structures Day 7 - Manipulating data
Day 3 - Control structures Day 8 - Advanced data types
Day 4 - Functions Day 9 - Troubleshooting
Day 5 - Creating programs Day 10 - Review

Degree schedule

  • Fall
    • Statistics
    • Environmental data
    • Geospatial analysis
    • Ethics and bias
  • Winter
    • More statistics
    • Data visualization
    • Environmental systems
    • Capstone I
  • Spring
    • Machine learning
    • Databases
    • Capstone II

All these classes use programming!

But since you haven’t taken them yet, in the meantime we’ll use programming to build…

Coral reef model