This course introduces the dictionary data structure and user-defined functions. You’ll learn about local and global variables, optional and keyword parameter-passing, named functions and lambda expressions. You’ll also learn about Python’s sorted function and how to control the order in which it sorts by passing in another function as an input. For your final project, you’ll read in simulated social media data from a file, compute sentiment scores, and write out .csv files. It covers chapters 10-16 of the textbook “Fundamentals of Python Programming,” which is the accompanying text (optional and free) for this course.

Python Functions, Files, and Dictionaries

Python Functions, Files, and Dictionaries
This course is part of Python 3 Programming Specialization


Instructors: Paul Resnick
Access provided by Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology
152,186 already enrolled
5,438 reviews
What you'll learn
Explore the dictionary data structure and user-defined functions in Python.
Understand concepts like local and global variables, parameter-passing techniques, named functions, and lambda expressions.
Apply Python's sorted function and control sorting order with custom functions.
Create a final project involving social media data analysis and CSV file manipulation.
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Reviewed on Aug 8, 2020
This course (and the specialization as well) is a bit more challenging than 'Python for Everybody'. I enjoyed a lot. Runestone is an amazing feature that really helped navigate through the course.
Reviewed on Oct 27, 2025
Runestone textbook and jupter notebook is very helpful for me to improve my problem solving skills for python language. Thank you Michigan University and the dearest teachers. Go Blue!
Reviewed on Nov 6, 2019
The course met all my expectations and went beyond. The instructors' explanations were easy to understand and the innovative method of having a digital textbook was undoubtedly convenient.
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