Book Image

Learning Predictive Analytics with Python

By : Ashish Kumar, Gary Dougan
Book Image

Learning Predictive Analytics with Python

By: Ashish Kumar, Gary Dougan

Overview of this book

Social Media and the Internet of Things have resulted in an avalanche of data. Data is powerful but not in its raw form - It needs to be processed and modeled, and Python is one of the most robust tools out there to do so. It has an array of packages for predictive modeling and a suite of IDEs to choose from. Learning to predict who would win, lose, buy, lie, or die with Python is an indispensable skill set to have in this data age. This book is your guide to getting started with Predictive Analytics using Python. You will see how to process data and make predictive models from it. We balance both statistical and mathematical concepts, and implement them in Python using libraries such as pandas, scikit-learn, and numpy. You’ll start by getting an understanding of the basics of predictive modeling, then you will see how to cleanse your data of impurities and get it ready it for predictive modeling. You will also learn more about the best predictive modeling algorithms such as Linear Regression, Decision Trees, and Logistic Regression. Finally, you will see the best practices in predictive modeling, as well as the different applications of predictive modeling in the modern world.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Learning Predictive Analytics with Python
Credits
Foreword
About the Author
Acknowledgments
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
A List of Links
Index

Summary


The main learning outcomes of this chapter are summarized as follows:

  • Various methods and variations in importing a dataset using pandas: read_csv and its variations, reading a dataset using open method in Python, reading a file in chunks using the open method, reading directly from a URL, specifying the column names from a list, changing the delimiter of a dataset, and so on.

  • Basic exploratory analysis of data: observing a thumbnail of data, shape, column names, column types, and summary statistics for numerical variables

  • Handling missing values: The reason for incorporation of missing values, why it is important to treat them properly, how to treat them properly by deletion and imputation, and various methods of imputing data.

  • Creating dummy variables: creating dummy variables for categorical variables to be used in the predictive models.

  • Basic plotting: scatter plotting, histograms and boxplots; their meaning and relevance; and how they are plotted.

This chapter is a head start into...