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 10

Getting a Crash Course in MatPlotLib

IN THIS CHAPTER

Bullet Creating a basic graph

Bullet Adding measurement lines to your graph

Bullet Dressing your graph up with styles and color

Bullet Documenting your graph with labels, annotations, and legends

Most people visualize information better when they see it in graphic, versus textual, format. Graphics help people see relationships and make comparisons with greater ease. Even if you can deal with the abstraction of textual data with ease, performing data analysis is all about communication. Unless you can communicate your ideas to other people, the act of obtaining, shaping, and analyzing the data has little value beyond your own personal needs. Fortunately, Python makes the task of converting your textual data into graphics relatively easy using MatPlotLib, which is actually a simulation of the MATLAB application. You can see a comparison of the two at https://pyzo.org/python_vs_matlab.html.

Tip If you already know how to use MATLAB (see MATLAB For Dummies...