Book Image

Practical Data Wrangling

By : Allan Visochek
Book Image

Practical Data Wrangling

By: Allan Visochek

Overview of this book

Around 80% of time in data analysis is spent on cleaning and preparing data for analysis. This is, however, an important task, and is a prerequisite to the rest of the data analysis workflow, including visualization, analysis and reporting. Python and R are considered a popular choice of tool for data analysis, and have packages that can be best used to manipulate different kinds of data, as per your requirements. This book will show you the different data wrangling techniques, and how you can leverage the power of Python and R packages to implement them. You’ll start by understanding the data wrangling process and get a solid foundation to work with different types of data. You’ll work with different data structures and acquire and parse data from various locations. You’ll also see how to reshape the layout of data and manipulate, summarize, and join data sets. Finally, we conclude with a quick primer on accessing and processing data from databases, conducting data exploration, and storing and retrieving data quickly using databases. The book includes practical examples on each of these points using simple and real-world data sets to give you an easier understanding. By the end of the book, you’ll have a thorough understanding of all the data wrangling concepts and how to implement them in the best possible way.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Title Page
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface

Chapter 2. Introduction to Programming in Python

Programming is a powerful tool for manipulating data because it gives you the ability to build your own custom tools for tackling non standard problems. Much of the content in this book will make use of the Python programming language, so in this chapter, I will give a brief introduction to programming in python. The chapter will include the following topics:

  • External resources
  • Logistical overview
  • Running programs in Python
  • Data types, variables, and the Python shell
  • Compound statements
  • Making comments within programs
  • A programmer's resources

If you are familiar with Python and general programming principals, you can comfortably skip ahead or skim through this chapter.