Book Image

Python Data Analysis - Third Edition

By : Avinash Navlani, Ivan Idris
5 (1)
Book Image

Python Data Analysis - Third Edition

5 (1)
By: Avinash Navlani, Ivan Idris

Overview of this book

Data analysis enables you to generate value from small and big data by discovering new patterns and trends, and Python is one of the most popular tools for analyzing a wide variety of data. With this book, you’ll get up and running using Python for data analysis by exploring the different phases and methodologies used in data analysis and learning how to use modern libraries from the Python ecosystem to create efficient data pipelines. Starting with the essential statistical and data analysis fundamentals using Python, you’ll perform complex data analysis and modeling, data manipulation, data cleaning, and data visualization using easy-to-follow examples. You’ll then understand how to conduct time series analysis and signal processing using ARMA models. As you advance, you’ll get to grips with smart processing and data analytics using machine learning algorithms such as regression, classification, Principal Component Analysis (PCA), and clustering. In the concluding chapters, you’ll work on real-world examples to analyze textual and image data using natural language processing (NLP) and image analytics techniques, respectively. Finally, the book will demonstrate parallel computing using Dask. By the end of this data analysis book, you’ll be equipped with the skills you need to prepare data for analysis and create meaningful data visualizations for forecasting values from data.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
1
Section 1: Foundation for Data Analysis
6
Section 2: Exploratory Data Analysis and Data Cleaning
11
Section 3: Deep Dive into Machine Learning
15
Section 4: NLP, Image Analytics, and Parallel Computing

Feature transformation

Feature transformation alters features so that they're in the required form. It also reduces the effect of outliers, handles skewed data, and makes the model more robust. The following list shows the different kinds of feature transformation:

  • Log transformation is the most common mathematical transformation used to transform skewed data into a normal distribution. Before applying the log transform, ensure that all the data values ​​only contain positive values; otherwise, this will throw an exception or error message.
  • Square and cube transformation has a moderate effect on distribution shape. It can be used to reduce left skewness.
  • Square and cube root transformation has a fairly strong transformation effect on the distribution shape but it is weaker than logarithms. It can be applied to right-skewed data.
  • Discretization can also be used to transform a numeric column or attribute. For example, the age of a group of candidates can be grouped into...