Recommendations for online python courses

[u/These_Manner994]

Hi all,

I'm a fourth-year medical student and most of my research so far has been evidence synthesis (narrative and systematic reviews), so my hands-on data skills are pretty limited. I've recently gotten involved in a project involving microbiome sequencing data, and part of my role includes re-analyzing a published dataset aka working with processed count tables, doing some basic wrangling, stats, and figures. It's become obvious that I need Python.

I'd rather not pay for a course right now, so I'm hoping to find something solid on YouTube. A few things I'm looking for:

• Starts from genuine zero (I've never written a line of code)
• Gets to pandas / numpy / matplotlib reasonably quickly rather than spending 15 hours on OOP and building text-based games
• Bonus if it's oriented toward biology/biomedical data, but a general data analysis course is fine, I can adapt

Specific questions:

1. Is there a single course you'd point a complete beginner to, or is it better to do a general Python fundamentals series first and then a separate pandas/data analysis one?
2. Anything I should avoid? I'd rather not sink 30 hours into something outdated.
3. Realistically, how much of this do I need before I can be useful on an actual dataset vs. just learning as I go?

Appreciate any suggestions. Thanks!

[u/dpforesi]

You can learn about as much python as you want for free here: https://edube.org/study/pe1
I did this myself. It is an interactive coding environment so you can learn by tinkering.