Book Image

Hands-On Data Preprocessing in Python

By : Roy Jafari
5 (2)
Book Image

Hands-On Data Preprocessing in Python

5 (2)
By: Roy Jafari

Overview of this book

Hands-On Data Preprocessing is a primer on the best data cleaning and preprocessing techniques, written by an expert who’s developed college-level courses on data preprocessing and related subjects. With this book, you’ll be equipped with the optimum data preprocessing techniques from multiple perspectives, ensuring that you get the best possible insights from your data. You'll learn about different technical and analytical aspects of data preprocessing – data collection, data cleaning, data integration, data reduction, and data transformation – and get to grips with implementing them using the open source Python programming environment. The hands-on examples and easy-to-follow chapters will help you gain a comprehensive articulation of data preprocessing, its whys and hows, and identify opportunities where data analytics could lead to more effective decision making. As you progress through the chapters, you’ll also understand the role of data management systems and technologies for effective analytics and how to use APIs to pull data. By the end of this Python data preprocessing book, you'll be able to use Python to read, manipulate, and analyze data; perform data cleaning, integration, reduction, and transformation techniques, and handle outliers or missing values to effectively prepare data for analytic tools.
Table of Contents (24 chapters)
1
Part 1:Technical Needs
6
Part 2: Analytic Goals
11
Part 3: The Preprocessing
18
Part 4: Case Studies

Chapter 4: Databases

Databases play a major technological role in data preprocessing and data analytics. However, time and again, I have seen plenty of misunderstandings surrounding their role in analytics. While it is possible to do simple analytics and data preprocessing using databases themselves, these tasks are not what databases are designed for. In contrast, databases are technological solutions to record and retrieve data effectively and efficiently.

In this chapter, we will first discuss the technological role of databases in effective analytics and preprocessing. We will then enumerate and understand the different types of databases. Finally, we will cover five different methods of connecting to, and pulling data from, databases.

The following topics will be covered in this chapter:

  • What is a database?
  • Types of databases
  • Connecting to, and pulling data from, databases