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

What is a database?

There may be a handful of different definitions of a database, all of which might be correct, but there is one definition that best serves the purpose of data analytics. A database is a technological solution to store and retrieve data both effectively and efficiently.

While it is true that databases are the technological foundations of data analytics, effective analytics do not happen inside them and that is a great thing. We want databases to be good at what they are meant to do: the effective and efficient storage and retrieval of data. We want a database to be fast, accurate, and secure. We also want a database to be able to serve our needs as regards quick sharing and synching.

When we want to get some data from databases for analytics purposes, it is easy to forget that databases are not designed to serve our analytics purposes. So, it should not be a surprise that the data in the database is organized in a way that serves its functions – the...