Book Image

Learn Python by Building Data Science Applications

By : Philipp Kats, David Katz
Book Image

Learn Python by Building Data Science Applications

By: Philipp Kats, David Katz

Overview of this book

Python is the most widely used programming language for building data science applications. Complete with step-by-step instructions, this book contains easy-to-follow tutorials to help you learn Python and develop real-world data science projects. The “secret sauce” of the book is its curated list of topics and solutions, put together using a range of real-world projects, covering initial data collection, data analysis, and production. This Python book starts by taking you through the basics of programming, right from variables and data types to classes and functions. You’ll learn how to write idiomatic code and test and debug it, and discover how you can create packages or use the range of built-in ones. You’ll also be introduced to the extensive ecosystem of Python data science packages, including NumPy, Pandas, scikit-learn, Altair, and Datashader. Furthermore, you’ll be able to perform data analysis, train models, and interpret and communicate the results. Finally, you’ll get to grips with structuring and scheduling scripts using Luigi and sharing your machine learning models with the world as a microservice. By the end of the book, you’ll have learned not only how to implement Python in data science projects, but also how to maintain and design them to meet high programming standards.
Table of Contents (26 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Section 1: Getting Started with Python
11
Section 2: Hands-On with Data
17
Section 3: Moving to Production

Understanding the basics of ML

As it's implied in its name, Machine Learning (ML) is the science of building machines (algorithms) that can learn from data. In other words, this class of algorithms generates certain outcomes (predictions) based on the relations they infer from the training data—not from the hardcoded, predetermined rules. Usually, ML is described as having two main branches—supervised and unsupervised ML.

Unsupervised models attempt to find structure in the data itself, without any given supervision or target to focus on. The usual task is to find clusters of similar records (for example, users) to understand the underlying latent logic (for example, using target audiences and the corresponding use cases for the service).

Supervised learning is all about training the model by feeding it pairs of independent features and the correct values of...