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The basic organisation of this book follows the life cycle of a data set, from its natural, analogue state--galaxies of stars swinging through space, herds of wildebeast stampeding across the African Veldt, or fragments of DNA bathed in bromide--to cold hard numbers in electronic form.
Along the way, we will discuss how computers can make the process faster, more efficient, and more accurate.
Most of the computer technologies that we encounter will be in the form of a computer language, so it is essential that we learn from the start how to produce computer code in the right way.
We start at the end point of a data project, with a simple computer technology for producing reports. We will have more to say on this topic towards the end of the book (Section 11.14); for now, the focus is on the fundamental concepts and techniques for writing computer code.
Paul Murrell
This document is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.