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

EXERCISES

CLARIFYING THE CONCEPTS

  1. When should analysts use exploratory data analysis (EDA) rather than hypothesis testing?
  2. What are some examples of what EDA allows the user to do?
  3. Which graph do we use to explore the relationship between a categorical predictor and the target variable?
  4. What are (non‐normalized) bar graphs useful for?
  5. State one advantage and one disadvantage of using a normalized bar graph.
  6. State the two best practices when working with bar graphs for EDA?
  7. What does a contingency table help us to do?
  8. Explain the two best practices when working with contingency tables in EDA?
  9. What is a histogram?
  10. Describe one advantage and one disadvantage of using a normalized histogram.
  11. What are the best practices for working with histograms in EDA?
  12. Why might it be useful for the analyst to bin a numeric variable?
  13. Why do we use the binning method shown in this chapter rather than automatic binning methods?
  14. Extrapolate from your answer to the previous question and explain why...