IPython talk by Brian Granger in Cambridge MA, USA, 8/15/2014

[Diab Jerius]

My apologies for the broad distribution. For those in the Boston MA,
USA area, the following talk may be of interest (especially in the
context of the ongoing IPerl work):


Brian Granger (one of the lead developers of IPython) will be giving a
talk titled "Making Exploratory and Interactive Scientific Computing
Open and Reproducible" at 2:30pm at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for
Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA, Pratt conference room.

The place is a maze, so if you're interested in going, drop me a line
and I'll make sure you get to the right room.

This is part of a series of (usually quite informal) talks about
computing and science we hold on a quasi-periodic/random schedule. If
you'd like to be put on the mailing list, please drop me a line.

If you're in the Boston area (or find yourself visiting) and would
like to present something, please drop me a line. While we are
predominantly an astrophysical institute, if it's numerical and
scientific, we're interested.


Here's the abstract:

Brian Granger
Making Exploratory and Interactive Scientific Computing Open and Reproducible

Computing, and thus software, is one of the foundations of modern
scientific research and education. It is used for simulation, data
analysis, statistical modeling, symbolic manipulation, experimental
control, etc. The software we use for these activities has a profound
affect on human behavior, attitudes and thought patterns. In this talk
I will describe open source software tools for exploratory and
interactive computing that promote reproducibility and openness.

In particular, I will describe the IPython Notebook, an open-source,
web-based interactive computing environment for Python, R, Julia and
other programming languages. The Notebook enables users to create
documents that combine live code, narrative text, equations, images,
video and other content. These notebook documents provide a complete
and reproducible record of a computation, its results and accompanying
material and can be shared over email, Dropbox, GitHub or converted to
static PDF/LaTeX, HTML, Markdown, etc. Most importantly, the IPython
Notebook is built on top of an open architecture for interactive
computing that is completely language neutral, allowing it to serve as
a foundation for other scientific projects and commercial products.

One of the most important aspects of scientific computing is
interacting with data. This involves iterative cycles of
visualization, computation and human computer interaction to extract
understanding and make predictions. IPython now provides an
architecture for interactive JavaScript/HTML/CSS widgets that allows
users to interact with their data in a direct and simple way by
automatically creating appropriate user interfaces for Python objects
and functions. This allows the power of modern JavaScript libraries
(d3.js, leaflet.js, backbone.js, etc.) to be leveraged in
Python/Julia/R driven computations.

Throughout the talk, I will provide examples of how IPython is being
used across a wide range of fields including science, engineering,
social sciences, computer science, industry, publishing and
journalism. IPython is funded through the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation,
the Simons Foundation, the National Science Foundation, Microsoft and
Rackspace.

Diab

[Diab Jerius]

Ooops. Wrong Time. The talk is at 3:00pm on Friday, August 15, 2014.