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

2.2 BASICS OF CODING IN PYTHON

In Python, as in most other programming languages, you run code which performs an action. Some actions also generate output. There are five kinds of actions we will focus on in this chapter: Using comments, Importing packages, Executing commands, Saving output, and Getting data into Python.

2.2.1 Using Comments in Python

Comments are pieces of code that are not executed by the compiler. Why are we starting our programming chapter with commands that would not be run? Because comments are a vital part of any programming project.

Comments are lines of code that the programmer puts there for others to understand the code better. For example, if you want to explain what a particular piece of code does, you may begin with a comment that explains what it does and what the result will be.

How do we write comments in Python? Comments are lines of code that start with a pound sign, #. The following is an example of a comment.

# This is a comment!

Notice that the...