Book Image

Practical Data Analysis Cookbook

By : Tomasz Drabas
Book Image

Practical Data Analysis Cookbook

By: Tomasz Drabas

Overview of this book

Data analysis is the process of systematically applying statistical and logical techniques to describe and illustrate, condense and recap, and evaluate data. Its importance has been most visible in the sector of information and communication technologies. It is an employee asset in almost all economy sectors. This book provides a rich set of independent recipes that dive into the world of data analytics and modeling using a variety of approaches, tools, and algorithms. You will learn the basics of data handling and modeling, and will build your skills gradually toward more advanced topics such as simulations, raw text processing, social interactions analysis, and more. First, you will learn some easy-to-follow practical techniques on how to read, write, clean, reformat, explore, and understand your data—arguably the most time-consuming (and the most important) tasks for any data scientist. In the second section, different independent recipes delve into intermediate topics such as classification, clustering, predicting, and more. With the help of these easy-to-follow recipes, you will also learn techniques that can easily be expanded to solve other real-life problems such as building recommendation engines or predictive models. In the third section, you will explore more advanced topics: from the field of graph theory through natural language processing, discrete choice modeling to simulations. You will also get to expand your knowledge on identifying fraud origin with the help of a graph, scrape Internet websites, and classify movies based on their reviews. By the end of this book, you will be able to efficiently use the vast array of tools that the Python environment has to offer.

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Practical Data Analysis Cookbook
Tomasz Drabas
Apr, 2016 | 384 pages
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Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Practical Data Analysis Cookbook
Practical Data Analysis Cookbook
Credits
Credits
About the Author
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments
About the Reviewers
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Preparing the Data
Preparing the Data
Introduction
Reading and writing CSV/TSV files with Python
Reading and writing JSON files with Python
Reading and writing Excel files with Python
Reading and writing XML files with Python
Retrieving HTML pages with pandas
Storing and retrieving from a relational database
Storing and retrieving from MongoDB
Opening and transforming data with OpenRefine
Exploring the data with Open Refine
Removing duplicates
Using regular expressions and GREL to clean up data
Imputing missing observations
Normalizing and standardizing the features
Binning the observations
Encoding categorical variables
2
Exploring the Data
Exploring the Data
Introduction
Producing descriptive statistics
Exploring correlations between features
Visualizing the interactions between features
Producing histograms
Creating multivariate charts
Sampling the data
Splitting the dataset into training, cross-validation, and testing
3
Classification Techniques
Classification Techniques
Introduction
Testing and comparing the models
Classifying with Naïve Bayes
Using logistic regression as a universal classifier
Utilizing Support Vector Machines as a classification engine
Classifying calls with decision trees
Predicting subscribers with random tree forests
Employing neural networks to classify calls
4
Clustering Techniques
Clustering Techniques
Introduction
Assessing the performance of a clustering method
Clustering data with k-means algorithm
Finding an optimal number of clusters for k-means
Discovering clusters with mean shift clustering model
Building fuzzy clustering model with c-means
Using hierarchical model to cluster your data
Finding groups of potential subscribers with DBSCAN and BIRCH algorithms
5
Reducing Dimensions
Reducing Dimensions
Introduction
Creating three-dimensional scatter plots to present principal components
Reducing the dimensions using the kernel version of PCA
Using Principal Component Analysis to find things that matter
Finding the principal components in your data using randomized PCA
Extracting the useful dimensions using Linear Discriminant Analysis
Using various dimension reduction techniques to classify calls using the k-Nearest Neighbors classification model
6
Regression Methods
Regression Methods
Introduction
Identifying and tackling multicollinearity
Building Linear Regression model
Using OLS to forecast how much electricity can be produced
Estimating the output of an electric plant using CART
Employing the kNN model in a regression problem
Applying the Random Forest model to a regression analysis
Gauging the amount of electricity a plant can produce using SVMs
Training a Neural Network to predict the output of a power plant
7
Time Series Techniques
Time Series Techniques
Introduction
Handling date objects in Python
Understanding time series data
Smoothing and transforming the observations
Filtering the time series data
Removing trend and seasonality
Forecasting the future with ARMA and ARIMA models
8
Graphs
Graphs
Introduction
Handling graph objects in Python with NetworkX
Using Gephi to visualize graphs
Identifying people whose credit card details were stolen
Identifying those responsible for stealing the credit cards
9
Natural Language Processing
Natural Language Processing
Introduction
Reading raw text from the Web
Tokenizing and normalizing text
Identifying parts of speech, handling n-grams, and recognizing named entities
Identifying the topic of an article
Identifying the sentence structure
Classifying movies based on their reviews
10
Discrete Choice Models
Discrete Choice Models
Introduction
Preparing a dataset to estimate discrete choice models
Estimating the well-known Multinomial Logit model
Testing for violations of the Independence from Irrelevant Alternatives
Handling IIA violations with the Nested Logit model
Managing sophisticated substitution patterns with the Mixed Logit model
11
Simulations
Simulations
Introduction
Using SimPy to simulate the refueling process of a gas station
Simulating out-of-energy occurrences for an electric car
Determining if a population of sheep is in danger of extinction due to a wolf pack
Index
Index

Acknowledgments

First and foremost, I would like to thank my wife, Rachel, and daughter, Skye, for encouraging me to undertake this challenge and tolerating long days of developing code and late nights of writing up. You are the best and I love you beyond bounds! Also, thanks to my family for putting up with me (in general).

Tomasz Bednarz has not only been a great friend but also a great mentor when I was learning programming—thank you! I also want to thank my current and former managers, Mike Stephenson and Rory Carter, as well as numerous colleagues and friends who also encouraged me to finish this book.

Special thanks go to my two former supervisors, Dr Richard Cheng-Lung Wu and Dr Tomasz Jablonski. The master's project with Tomasz sparked my interest in neural networks—lessons that I will never forget. Without Richard's help, I would not have been able to finish my PhD and will always be grateful for his help, guidance, and friendship.

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