1. The purpose of this course

Hello, and welcome to the course! My name is Seán, and I’m the Academy Lead here at digiLab.

As the title of this section suggests - this course doesn’t focus on machine learning! I’m actually a structural engineer by training who developed an addiction to software development somewhere along the way!

So, in this course, my aim is not to teach you machine learning but to get you ready to dive into it with the rest of digiLab team. After completing this course, you should be ready to start working through the machine learning-focused courses inside digiLab Academy.

You can think of what we cover in this course as preliminary material to help you get set up. So, we’ll cover,

• some general tips on how to get the most from a digiLab Academy course
• what you need to download and how to get your coding environment setup
• how to get support from your course tutor and other students
• a basic introduction to Python

We‘ll work on the basis that you’re new to Python. So don’t worry If you’ve never coded in Python before - we’ll cover the basics.

The rest you’ll pick up along the way as you move through the other courses.

This course is really about reducing your cognitive load during later courses. You’ll be diving into some pretty challenging material in those later courses. So the last thing you need when wading through beefy new equations is also to be hitting Python for the first time. That’s why we’re tackling some basic Python here first.

The other thing to say at this point, if it’s not already obvious, is that if you’ve found yourself reading this but are already comfortable programming in Python, you can probably skip this course and jump straight into the next course.

Ok - that’s it for the introduction. In the next lesson, we’ll discuss our approach and philosophy when it comes to learning Python.