Data analysis is one of the most important use cases of NumPy. Depending on our goals, we can distinguish between many phases and types of data analysis. In this chapter, we will talk about exploratory and predictive data analysis. Exploratory data analysis probes the data for clues. At this stage, we are probably unfamiliar with the dataset. Predictive analysis tries to predict something about the data using a model.
The data comes from the Dutch meteorological institute KNMI. It is specifically about the weather station at De Bilt, where the KNMI headquarters is located. In these recipes, we will inspect atmospheric pressure and maximum visibility (see http://www.knmi.nl/climatology/daily_data/download.html).
I modified and converted the textual data from the KNMI to the NumPy-specific .npy
format, saved as a 40996 x 5 array. The array contains daily values for five variables:
The date in the
YYYYMMDD
formatThe average daily atmospheric pressure
The highest daily atmospheric...