Book Image

Python for Data Science For Dummies - Second Edition

By : John Paul Mueller, Luca Massaron
Book Image

Python for Data Science For Dummies - Second Edition

By: John Paul Mueller, Luca Massaron

Overview of this book

Python is a general-purpose programming language created in the late 1980s — and named after Monty Python — that's used by thousands of people to do things from testing microchips at Intel to powering Instagram to building video games with the PyGame library. The book begins by discussing how Python can make data science easy. You’ll learn how to work with the Anaconda tool suite that makes coding in Python easy. You’ll also learn to write code using Google Colab. As you progress, you'll discover how to perform interesting calculations and data manipulations using various Python libraries, such as pandas and NumPy. You’ll learn how to create data visualizations with MatPlotLib. While learning the advanced concepts, you’ll learn how to wrangle data by using techniques, such as hierarchical clustering. Finally, you’ll learn how to work with decision trees and use machine learning to make predictions. By the end of the book, you’ll have the skills and the knowledge that’s needed to write code in Python and extract information from data.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Cover
9
Index
10
About the Authors
11
Advertisement Page
12
Connect with Dummies
13
End User License Agreement

Chapter 3

Setting Up Python for Data Science

IN THIS CHAPTER

Bullet Obtaining an off-the-shelf solution

Bullet Creating an Anaconda installation on Linux, Mac OS, and Windows

Bullet Getting and installing the datasets and example code

Before you can do too much with Python or use it to solve data science problems, you need a workable installation. In addition, you need access to the datasets and code used for this book. Downloading the sample code and installing it on your system is the best way to get a good learning experience from the book. This chapter helps you get your system set up so that you can easily follow the examples in the remainder of the book.

This book relies on Jupyter Notebook version 5.5.0 supplied with the Anaconda 3 environment (version 5.2.0) that supports the Python version 3.6.5 to create the coding examples. For the examples to work, you must use Python 3.6.5 and the packages’ version as present in the Anaconda 3 version 5.2.0. Older versions of both Python and its packages...