URL: http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/tutorials.html
The pandas library is a great package—anything you normally write to do data loading is probably already implemented in pandas. You can learn more about it from their tutorial.
There is also a great blog post written by Chris Moffitt that overviews common tasks people do in Excel and how to do them in pandas: http://pbpython.com/excel-pandas-comp.html
You can also handle large datasets with pandas; see the answer, from user Jeff, to this StackOverflow question for an extensive overview of the process: http://stackoverflow.com/a/14268804/307363.
Another great tutorial on pandas is written by Brian Connelly: http://bconnelly.net/2013/10/summarizing-data-in-python-with-pandas/.
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Larger exercise!
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