Data Structures

Lists, dicts, tuples, sets — Python's built-in collections and the Excel equivalents for each.

Foundations 7 lessons ~55 min

Lessons in this module

1. Lists — the everyday ordered collection · 9 min
   Create, index, slice, modify. The Python equivalent of a single-column range.
2. Dictionaries — key-value lookups · 9 min
   VLOOKUP, built-in to the language. Create, look up, update, iterate.
3. Tuples and when to use them · 5 min
   Lists you can't change. Smaller, faster, and a perfect fit for fixed pairs.
4. Sets — unique values, fast · 6 min
   When you need to deduplicate, check membership, or do union/intersection.
5. Nested structures — lists of dicts, dicts of lists · 7 min
   How real-world data actually looks in Python before pandas comes along.
6. Working with dates · 8 min
   The datetime module, parsing strings to dates, and date arithmetic.
7. Files and paths — the pathlib essentials · 8 min
   Read and write text files; build paths that work on Mac, Windows, and Linux.