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

Improving Your Model – Pipelines and Experiments

In the previous chapter, we trained a basic machine learning (ML) model. However, most real-world scenarios require models to be accurate, and that means the model and features need to be improved and fine-tuned for a specific task. This process is usually long, iterative, and based on trial and error.

So, in this chapter, we will see how we can improve and validate model quality and keep track of all of the experiments along the way. As a result, we will improve the quality of the model and learn how to track our experiments and log metrics and parameters. In particular, we'll learn the following:

  • Understanding cross-validation and overfitting
  • Adding features in order to improve models
  • Wrapping models and transformations into pipelines
  • Version control of our datasets and metrics using the dvc package
...