Start Here: Part III Guide — Tabular Data and Reproducible Workflows (tentative)

What this placeholder does—and does not promise¶

This page names the direction of later work so that a reader can see how tables and provenance connect to the completed foundations. It does not promise a schedule, imply that the preview pages below form a sequence, or make Chapter 12 a prerequisite. Use Parts I–II for the current textbook route.

Intended scope¶

Part III will apply the earlier habits of explicit assumptions, inspection, and testing to tabular data. Its planned topics are DataFrames and relational operations; raw versus derived data; schemas and quality flags; cleaning decision records; exploratory data analysis; columnar formats and Polars; and SQL/DuckDB query workflows.

The aim is not merely to load and transform a table. It is to create a defensible dataset whose source, transformations, missingness, and limitations another reader can inspect.

Current preview material¶

Chapter 11 is available as an early reference on labeled tables and operations. Chapter 12 is a scope note only. Neither is part of the completed Parts I–II reading route or a substitute for a completed Part III sequence.

What to use now¶

For current independent foundations, use Part II: arrays, visualization, tests, and small scientific types. Its recap helps trace a claim from representation through evidence before later data work adds records and provenance. This guide will link to a complete Part III sequence when that sequence exists.