How to use this book

You can browse this book just like any other website. For an explanation of the population genetic terminology it may help to start by looking through the glossary.

Many of the pages are Jupyter notebooks containing Python code plus some explanatory text. You can run the code yourself using the interactive cloud computing service provided by Google Colab. Follow this link to learn how to use Google Colab - it is remarkably easy.

Even if you’re new to Python you can try out small modifications to the code, e.g. to vary the parameter settings of a worked example. Don’t worry about making an error, if you get into trouble you can simply refresh the web page and start again.

If you want to be more adventurous you can learn how to use coalestr, a Python module that underpins most the worked examples on this website. This will allow you to simulate your own epidemiological scenarios.

If you want to use coalestr for your own applications outside this website, you can install it from PyPI or view the source code on GitHub.