These IPython notebooks form the basis of a course on data analysis and visualization taught at the Chemistry Department of Imperial College London as part of the first year undergraduate curriculum. The purpose of the course is to introduce the basic data analysis techniques required to interpret experimental (or otherwise) data collected in the laboratory, along with introducing the IPython notebook as an electronic, multi-media, interactive computing notebook that students are encouraged to use throughout their degree.

Whilst the focus of the course is not computer programming, it could serve as a pre-introduction to the subject. It introduces variables, data structures in the form of arrays, functions, and more generally a computing platform: the Python language.

The course was designed as a series of self-learning interactive exercises using IPython notebooks. The first three notebooks introduce concepts interactively while the two exercise notebooks develop problem solving based on these concepts.

• Workshop-1 Introduction to Python and Plotting

• Workshop-2 Statistics and Linear Fitting

• Workshop-3 Modules, Functions, Non Linear Fitting and 3D plotting

• Exercise-1 Descriptive statistics and analysis of chemical kinetics data

• Exercise-2 Chromatogram analysis and spectral fitting

The notebooks and related materials are made available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 (CC-by) license, and can be downloaded as a zip archive (or using the "download zip" button on the right). In order to use the notebooks interactively in your computer you will need to have installed a scientific python distribution (version 3.x), such as Anaconda.

We are interested in your feedback and to hear about other ways this material is being used.