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. What is a decision tree?
  2. What is the difference between a decision node and a leaf node?
  3. In a decision tree, where is the most powerful of all possible splits made?
  4. When do decision trees stop growing?
  5. How do decision trees work?
  6. Would CART be a good algorithm to use if we are interested in a trinary categorical predictor?
  7. Which criterion is used by CART to assess which split is optimal?
  8. Which concept does the C5.0 algorithm use to select the optimal split?
  9. What are random forests?
  10. How do random forests work?
  11. Are all the predictor variables candidates to be the “best” split for each node in a tree built by random forests?
  12. Are the data sets used to build each tree in random forests the same?
  13. How does the random forests algorithm give the training data set its final classification?

WORKING WITH THE DATA

For Exercises 1420, work with the adult_ch6_training and adult_ch6_test data sets. Use either Python or R to solve each problem...