Wakari (http://continuum.io/wakari) is a collaborative data analytics platform that allows you to explore data and create analytic scripts in collaboration with IPython Notebooks. It is an offering of Continuum Analytics, the creators of the Anaconda Python distribution, which is generally considered to be one of the best Python distributions. Wakari is offered as a solution that you can run in your enterprise at an expense, or as a web- or cloud-based solution offered on a freemium basis. The following screenshot shows Wakari as an offering of Continuum Analytics:

The approach in this text will be to guide you in using the cloud-based Wakari solution. This environment provides an effective quick start to learning pandas and performing all the data analysis in this text but with very minimal effort in managing a local Python installation.