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

1.4 DATA SCIENCE TASKS

The most common data science tasks are the following:

  • Description
  • Estimation
  • Classification
  • Clustering
  • Prediction
  • Association

Next, we describe what each of these tasks represent and in which chapters these tasks are covered.

1.4.1 Description

Data scientists are often called upon to describe patterns and trends lying within the data. For example, a data scientist may describe a cluster of customers most likely to leave our company's service as those with high‐usage minutes and a high number of customer service calls. After describing this cluster, the data scientist may explain that the high number of customer service calls indicates perhaps that the customer is unhappy. Working with the marketing team, the analyst can then suggest possible interventions to explore to retain such customers.

The description task is in widespread use around the world by specialists and nonspecialists alike. For example, when a sports announcer states that a baseball...