To get the most out of this book

• Readers should be interested in computing, using Python, and doing data science
• This book is intended for beginners and intermediates to Python and data science, though more advanced practitioners can benefit by reading it as well (for example, to review and maybe learn some new things)
• Readers should have some basic knowledge of how to use a computer and the internet
• Installation of Python is required, but is covered in the book

Download the example code files

The code bundle for the book is hosted on GitHub at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Practical-Data-Science-with-Python. We also have other code bundles from our rich catalog of books and videos available at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/. Check them out!

Download the color images

We also provide a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. You can download it here: https://static.packt-cdn.com/downloads/9781801071970_ColorImages.pdf.

Conventions used

There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

CodeInText: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. For example: "Lists or sets can be converted to tuples with the tuple() function."

A block of code is set as follows:

def test_function(doPrint, printAdd='more'):
    """
    A demo function.
    """
    if doPrint:
        print('test' + printAdd)
        return printAdd

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

SELECT * FROM artists LIMIT 5;

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes. For example: "We can create a new notebook by choosing New and then Python 3."