Computing is revolutionizing the practice of biology‎.‎ This book‎,‎ which assumes no prior computing experience‎,‎ provides students with the tools to write their own Python programs and to understand fundamental concepts in computational biology and bioinformatics‎.‎ Each major part of the book begins with a compelling biological question‎,‎ followed by the algorithmic ideas and programming tools necessary to explore it‎:‎ the origins of pathogenicity are examined using gene finding‎,‎ the evolutionary history of sex determination systems is studied using sequence alignment‎,‎ and the origin of modern humans is addressed using phylogenetic methods‎.‎ In addition to providing general programming skills‎,‎ this book explores the design of efficient algorithms‎,‎ simulation‎,‎ NP‎-hardness‎,‎ and the maximum likelihood method‎,‎ among other key concepts and methods‎.‎ Easy‎-to‎-read and designed to equip students with the skills to write programs for solving a range of biological problems‎,‎ the book is accompanied by numerous programming exercises‎,‎ available at www‎.‎cs‎.‎hmc‎.‎edu/CFB‎.‎