Functional Programming & Data Science Applications

A beginner-friendly introduction to the concept of functional programming, benefits and disadvantages, and applications in data science.

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Functional Programming is a paradigm that treats computation as evaluating mathematical functions. It limits what programming languages allow you to do - but in return it makes firm guarantees about safety and correctness of code, which are particularly valuable at scale.

For example, functional code can't have any side effects outside a function, which makes it easier to verify correctness, and is incredibly helpful for parallel computation on modern multi-core/cpu and distributed hardware.

Until recently, functional programming has been considered niche and difficult, albeit powerful. Today, demand for functional programming skills are rising sharply, with the finance sector being a notable example, and interest in numerical computing applications also being actively developed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_programming

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We're very lucky to have Callum O'Brien of Bluefruit Software share his expertise and experience with us.

He will:

• explain what functional programming is

• illustrate its elegance with some key examples

• discuss the benefits and disadvantages

• explore applicability to data science and numerical computing workflows

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This session is intended to introduce functional programming to newcomers so you don't need to be an expert. Some basic programming experience will be helpful to compare and contrast with functional programming.

This is not a hands-on tutorial but feel free to code along in the session. You might find the Haskell online environment useful as it requires no software to be installed https://repl.it/languages/haskell

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Please note this session will be held at the same Penryn Campus as usual but in a different building, this time the University of Exeter Centre for Mathematics and the Environment, which is the building facing the usual AIR building.

Venue: The Exchange
Seminar Room: The Exchange Red
Penryn Campus, Penryn TR10 9FE

map (pdf): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1puxCTf1EyirZIoG9S6pznE3iGz5a4aOg/view?usp=sharing

We'll start at 7.00pm but you can arrive from 6.30pm.

Car parking is free after 5pm outside the AIR building.