Book Image

Data Science Using Python and R

By : Chantal D. Larose, Daniel T. Larose
Book Image

Data Science Using Python and R

By: Chantal D. Larose, Daniel T. Larose

Overview of this book

Data science is hot. Bloomberg named a data scientist as the ‘hottest job in America’. Python and R are the top two open-source data science tools using which you can produce hands-on solutions to real-world business problems, using state-of-the-art techniques. Each chapter in the book presents step-by-step instructions and walkthroughs for solving data science problems using Python and R. You’ll learn how to prepare data, perform exploratory data analysis, and prepare to model the data. As you progress, you’ll explore what are decision trees and how to use them. You’ll also learn about model evaluation, misclassification costs, naïve Bayes classification, and neural networks. The later chapters provide comprehensive information about clustering, regression modeling, dimension reduction, and association rules mining. The book also throws light on exciting new topics, such as random forests and general linear models. The book emphasizes data-driven error costs to enhance profitability, which avoids the common pitfalls that may cost a company millions of dollars. By the end of this book, you’ll have enough knowledge and confidence to start providing solutions to data science problems using R and Python.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
17
INDEX
18
END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT

1.2 WHAT IS DATA SCIENCE?

Simply put, data science is the systematic analysis of data within a scientific framework. That is, data science is the

  • adaptive, iterative, and phased approach to the analysis of data,
  • performed within a systematic framework,
  • that uncovers optimal models,
  • by assessing and accounting for the true costs of prediction errors.

Data science combines the

  • data‐driven approach of statistical data analysis,
  • the computational power and programming acumen of computer science, and
  • domain‐specific business intelligence,

in order to uncover actionable and profitable nuggets of information from large databases.

In other words, data science allows us to extract actionable knowledge from under‐utilized databases. Thus, data warehouses that have been gathering dust can now be leveraged to uncover hidden profit and enhance the bottom line. Data science lets people leverage large amounts of data and computing power to tackle complex questions. Patterns...