Book Image

Practical Data Analysis Cookbook

By : Tomasz Drabas
Book Image

Practical Data Analysis Cookbook

By: Tomasz Drabas

Overview of this book

Data analysis is the process of systematically applying statistical and logical techniques to describe and illustrate, condense and recap, and evaluate data. Its importance has been most visible in the sector of information and communication technologies. It is an employee asset in almost all economy sectors. This book provides a rich set of independent recipes that dive into the world of data analytics and modeling using a variety of approaches, tools, and algorithms. You will learn the basics of data handling and modeling, and will build your skills gradually toward more advanced topics such as simulations, raw text processing, social interactions analysis, and more. First, you will learn some easy-to-follow practical techniques on how to read, write, clean, reformat, explore, and understand your data—arguably the most time-consuming (and the most important) tasks for any data scientist. In the second section, different independent recipes delve into intermediate topics such as classification, clustering, predicting, and more. With the help of these easy-to-follow recipes, you will also learn techniques that can easily be expanded to solve other real-life problems such as building recommendation engines or predictive models. In the third section, you will explore more advanced topics: from the field of graph theory through natural language processing, discrete choice modeling to simulations. You will also get to expand your knowledge on identifying fraud origin with the help of a graph, scrape Internet websites, and classify movies based on their reviews. By the end of this book, you will be able to efficiently use the vast array of tools that the Python environment has to offer.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Practical Data Analysis Cookbook
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgments
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Using SimPy to simulate the refueling process of a gas station


If you own a car, visiting a gas station every other week has most likely become part of your routine: pull over next to the pump, swipe your card (or pay inside), fuel up your car, and leave.

However, if you put yourself in the shoes of a gas station owner before it is even built, a number of possible questions come to mind:

  • What is the frequency of cars pulling over to fill up?

  • How would that affect the wait time for each driver? (We do not want a driver to wait for too long as he or she might choose a competitor.)

  • Will the number of distributors be enough to satisfy demand?

  • How often will I have to call the supplier to replenish the tanks?

  • How much profit can I make?

These are, however, just a handful of questions that you, as the owner of a future gas station, might be asking yourself.

There are also those what-if questions. What if I add two more distributors? What if I put bigger tanks so that I do not have to call the supplier...