So till now we have seen functions with a name.

So there are functions in Python called

anonymous or lambda functions which do not have a name. These are extremely useful, and
they're extensively used in data science and machine learning in general. But let's see, these
are extremely powerful. I told you earlier, right, that some of my most favorite functions in
Python are filter, map, and reduce function functions. We'll see how lambda functions are
used along with functions like filter, map, and reduce to make code much more elegant,
simple, and concise. Okay, so let's understand what they are, right? So typically, let's take
examples. I think that'll explain things much better. Imagine here what I'm creating here is a
simple function, and how is this function? I'm creating a function called double. Okay, what
does that do? It basically doubles the number that I give, right? So if I say print double five, it
doubles five into two. It returns five into two, which is ten. Now the same thing, I can write
it using lambda functions or using anonymous functions like this. Okay, I can say double
equals to. This is the function name, right? This is the function name. This is the function
name. Here I'm using the keyword lambda, and I'm saying the input, this is your argument.
This is your argument, and this is what it will output. The structure is elegant, right? You
have the function name equals to. This equals to is important. You're using the word
lambda, which is a keyword in python x. You're using a column here. So what you're saying
here is I'm defining a function called double using anonymous functions, using lambda
functions such that if you input x to me, I'll return x into two. See, all of this function
definition is done in one line. Literally, these are called lambda functions. Very, very elegant.
And here, remember here I've given a name called double to this function. I can avoid this
altogether. I'll show you examples of how to avoid this altogether. But here I've given the
name. Okay, so lambda functions could be anonymous, or they could be named anonymous,
basically in English, means that there is no name to it. Okay? We can choose to have a name
like this, or we can choose not to have. I'll show you examples in a little while. Okay, so
when I say print double five, it again returns ten. So my function definition is literally this
single line. It's literally this single line. What I'm saying here is my input is x, and I'm
returning x into two. Literally, in this short snippet, in this one line, you're defining a whole
function that's the elegance. Now, as I told you earlier that I really like using lambda
functions with filter, map and reduce. Let's see the examples. Imagine I have a list
containing five elements. 12345. Okay? And imagine if I want to produce a list of only even
numbers in my bigger list, which means I want to find a subset of my list which satisfies a
condition. What do we use there? We use filter, right? We use filter. Now look at how I do it.
So here, what I'm doing here is I'm using the filter function as we know. What did we do
earlier? In the filter function, we used to give a function name here, followed by an iterable
data structure, like a list, right? So here I used to give a function name earlier. If I do not use
my lambda functions, what I would do, I would create a function called ease even, which will
return true. See what I would do? I would create a function called ease even, right? What it
will do if x percentage two equals to zero, right? Return true, else return false. Right? This is
how my function would have been defined. And here what I would have written. I would
have written ease even if I did not use lambda functions. This is how it would have worked
out, right? But here I'm using a lambda function, and this lambda function has no name.
Look at this, look at this. Very important. This whole thing has no name. I'm just giving the
function definition here. No name, it has no name. It's an anonymous function. So it's also an
anonymous function. Right? Now let's see how I've defined it. I'm saying that my input, my
argument is x and what you should return, you should return whether x percentile two or x
mod two equals to zero. What does this mean? It means this will return true if x is even.
What does x e even mean? Which means it's exactly divisible by two, right? So I have
defined this whole thing, this whole thing I have defined, in literally this short sentence
here. I'm saying my input argument is x, and what you have to return is true or false, and
return true. This statement is true if x is exactly divisible by two, which means it's an even
number, or else it will return false. Whatever logic I've written here, I'm writing it in single
line, and this function has no name. These are called anonymous functions using lambda.
These are extremely useful when you have to write short snippets of functions. These are
extremely useful because this is a short snippet of function, right? Instead of, again defining
a function, everything. There's a much more elegant way of doing it. Now let's see how to
use it with map. You remember we took elements in a list and we computed the square of
each of these elements. We did that right. Now let's see how to do it with lambda functions.
Very simple. This is the only change. Earlier I used to use a function here. Now I'm saying
lambda of x. This is the argument. So whatever value you give, give, return the square of the
number. Just literally in this short snippet, you have the whole function defined. And look at
it now to compute this exponent of each value. You just got it done in two lines of code.
Actually, to be frank, it's only one line of code, right? So if you get used to using functions
like map and using constructs like anonymous functions or lambda functions, code can be
made very, very concise, very, very elegant. Those people who do not know Python, for
those people, this code could become slightly tricky to read. But for people who know
Python, this code is the pinnacle, is the best in elegance of Python coding. Okay, now let's
look at the reduce example. You remember we multiplied all the elements in a list. Same
thing I can do here. I have a list in the reduce function. I have just this one line here.
Remember, I have two arguments. I have two arguments here, not one argument. So in
lambda functions, you can have as many arguments as you want. So I have two arguments,
and I'm written in x multiplied by y. And I'm using the reduce function from funk tools here.
Like the previous case, we saw these examples when we learned the inbuilt functions, right?
In types of functions, we learned about the inbuilt functions where we learned map, reduce
and filter, exactly the same thing. Lambda functions make your code much more concise,
much more elegant, and much more fun when you know python.