An Introduction to Python

Python is a popular object-oriented programing language having the capabilities of high-level

programming language. Its easy to learn syntax and portability capability makes it popular
these days. The followings facts gives us the introduction to Python −

 Python was developed by Guido van Rossum at Stichting Mathematisch Centrum in

the Netherlands.
 It was written as the successor of programming language named ‘ABC’.
 It’s first version was released in 1991.
 The name Python was picked by Guido van Rossum from a TV show named Monty
Python’s Flying Circus.
 It is an open source programming language which means that we can freely download
it and use it to develop programs. It can be downloaded from www.python.org.
 Python programming language is having the features of Java and C both. It is having
the elegant ‘C’ code and on the other hand, it is having classes and objects like Java
for object-oriented programming.
 It is an interpreted language, which means the source code of Python program would
be first converted into bytecode and then executed by Python virtual machine.

Strengths and Weaknesses of Python

Every programming language has some strengths as well as weaknesses, so does Python too.

Strengths

According to studies and surveys, Python is the fifth most important language as well as the
most popular language for machine learning and data science. It is because of the following
strengths that Python has −

Easy to learn and understand − The syntax of Python is simpler; hence it is relatively easy,
even for beginners also, to learn and understand the language.

Multi-purpose language − Python is a multi-purpose programming language because it

supports structured programming, object-oriented programming as well as functional
programming.

Huge number of modules − Python has huge number of modules for covering every aspect
of programming. These modules are easily available for use hence making Python an
extensible language.

Support of open source community − As being open source programming language, Python
is supported by a very large developer community. Due to this, the bugs are easily fixed by
the Python community. This characteristic makes Python very robust and adaptive.

Scalability − Python is a scalable programming language because it provides an improved

structure for supporting large programs than shell-scripts.

Weakness
Although Python is a popular and powerful programming language, it has its own weakness
of slow execution speed.

The execution speed of Python is slow as compared to compiled languages because Python is
an interpreted language. This can be the major area of improvement for Python community.

You Can Do Machine Learning in Python

Work through the tutorial above. It will take you 5-to-10 minutes, max!

You do not need to understand everything. (at least not right now) Your goal is to run
through the tutorial end-to-end and get a result. You do not need to understand everything on
the first pass. List down your questions as you go. Make heavy use of the
help(“FunctionName”) help syntax in Python to learn about all of the functions that you’re
using.

You do not need to know how the algorithms work. It is important to know about the
limitations and how to configure machine learning algorithms. But learning about algorithms
can come later. You need to build up this algorithm knowledge slowly over a long period of
time. Today, start off by getting comfortable with the platform.

You do not need to be a Python programmer. The syntax of the Python language can be
intuitive if you are new to it. Just like other languages, focus on function calls (e.g. function())
and assignments (e.g. a = “b”). This will get you most of the way. You are a developer, you
know how to pick up the basics of a language real fast. Just get started and dive into the
details later.

You do not need to be a machine learning expert. You can learn about the benefits and
limitations of various algorithms later, and there are plenty of posts that you can read later to
brush up on the steps of a machine learning project and the importance of evaluating accuracy
using cross validation.

What about other steps in a machine learning project. We did not cover all of the steps in
a machine learning project because this is your first project and we need to focus on the key
steps. Namely, loading data, looking at the data, evaluating some algorithms and making
some predictions. In later tutorials we can look at other data preparation and result
improvement tasks.

Installing Python
For working in Python, we must first have to install it. You can perform the installation of
Python in any of the following two ways −

 Installing Python individually

 Using Pre-packaged Python distribution − Anaconda

Let us discuss these each in detail.

Installing Python Individually

If you want to install Python on your computer, then then you need to download only the
binary code applicable for your platform. Python distribution is available for Windows, Linux
and Mac platforms.

The following is a quick overview of installing Python on the above-mentioned platforms −

On Unix and Linux platform

With the help of following steps, we can install Python on Unix and Linux platform −

 First, go to www.python.org/downloads/.
 Next, click on the link to download zipped source code available for Unix/Linux.
 Now, Download and extract files.
 Next, we can edit the Modules/Setup file if we want to customize some options.
o Next, write the command run ./configure script
o make
o make install

On Windows platform

With the help of following steps, we can install Python on Windows platform −

 First, go to www.python.org/downloads/.
 Next, click on the link for Windows installer python-XYZ.msi file. Here XYZ is the
version we wish to install.
 Now, we must run the file that is downloaded. It will take us to the Python install
wizard, which is easy to use. Now, accept the default settings and wait until the install
is finished.

On Macintosh platform

For Mac OS X, Homebrew, a great and easy to use package installer is recommended to
install Python 3. In case if you don't have Homebrew, you can install it with the help of
following command −

$ ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

It can be updated with the command below −

$ brew update

Now, to install Python3 on your system, we need to run the following command −

$ brew install python3

Using Pre-packaged Python Distribution: Anaconda

Anaconda is a packaged compilation of Python which have all the libraries widely used in
Data science. We can follow the following steps to setup Python environment using
Anaconda −

 Step 1 − First, we need to download the required installation package from Anaconda
distribution. The link for the same is www.anaconda.com/distribution/. You can
choose from Windows, Mac and Linux OS as per your requirement.
 Step 2 − Next, select the Python version you want to install on your machine. The
latest Python version is 3.7. There you will get the options for 64-bit and 32-bit
Graphical installer both.
 Step 3 − After selecting the OS and Python version, it will download the Anaconda
installer on your computer. Now, double click the file and the installer will install
Anaconda package.
 Step 4 − For checking whether it is installed or not, open a command prompt and type
Python as follows −

You can also check this in detailed video lecture at

www.tutorialspoint.com/python_essentials_online_training/getting_started_with_anaconda.as
p.

Why Python for Data Science?

Python is the fifth most important language as well as most popular language for Machine
learning and data science. The following are the features of Python that makes it the preferred
choice of language for data science −

Extensive set of packages

Python has an extensive and powerful set of packages which are ready to be used in various
domains. It also has packages like numpy, scipy, pandas, scikit-learn etc. which are
required for machine learning and data science.
Easy prototyping

Another important feature of Python that makes it the choice of language for data science is
the easy and fast prototyping. This feature is useful for developing new algorithm.

Collaboration feature

The field of data science basically needs good collaboration and Python provides many useful
tools that make this extremely.

One language for many domains

A typical data science project includes various domains like data extraction, data
manipulation, data analysis, feature extraction, modelling, evaluation, deployment and
updating the solution. As Python is a multi-purpose language, it allows the data scientist to
address all these domains from a common platform.

Components of Python ML Ecosystem

In this section, let us discuss some core Data Science libraries that form the components of
Python Machine learning ecosystem. These useful components make Python an important
language for Data Science. Though there are many such components, let us discuss some of
the importance components of Python ecosystem here −

Jupyter Notebook
Jupyter notebooks basically provides an interactive computational environment for
developing Python based Data Science applications. They are formerly known as ipython
notebooks. The following are some of the features of Jupyter notebooks that makes it one of
the best components of Python ML ecosystem −

 Jupyter notebooks can illustrate the analysis process step by step by arranging the stuff
like code, images, text, output etc. in a step by step manner.
 It helps a data scientist to document the thought process while developing the analysis
process.
 One can also capture the result as the part of the notebook.
 With the help of jupyter notebooks, we can share our work with a peer also.

Installation and Execution

If you are using Anaconda distribution, then you need not install jupyter notebook separately
as it is already installed with it. You just need to go to Anaconda Prompt and type the
following command −

C:\>jupyter notebook

After pressing enter, it will start a notebook server at localhost:8888 of your computer. It is
shown in the following screen shot −
Now, after clicking the New tab, you will get a list of options. Select Python 3 and it will take
you to the new notebook for start working in it. You will get a glimpse of it in the following
screenshots −
On the other hand, if you are using standard Python distribution then jupyter notebook can be
installed using popular python package installer, pip.

pip install jupyter

Types of Cells in Jupyter Notebook

The following are the three types of cells in a jupyter notebook −

Code cells − As the name suggests, we can use these cells to write code. After writing the
code/content, it will send it to the kernel that is associated with the notebook.

Markdown cells − We can use these cells for notating the computation process. They can
contain the stuff like text, images, Latex equations, HTML tags etc.

Raw cells − The text written in them is displayed as it is. These cells are basically used to add
the text that we do not wish to be converted by the automatic conversion mechanism of
jupyter notebook.

For more detailed study of jupyter notebook, you can go to the link
www.tutorialspoint.com/jupyter/index.htm.
NumPy

It is another useful component that makes Python as one of the favorite languages for Data
Science. It basically stands for Numerical Python and consists of multidimensional array
objects. By using NumPy, we can perform the following important operations −

 Mathematical and logical operations on arrays.

 Fourier transformation
 Operations associated with linear algebra.

We can also see NumPy as the replacement of MatLab because NumPy is mostly used along
with Scipy (Scientific Python) and Mat-plotlib (plotting library).

Installation and Execution

If you are using Anaconda distribution, then no need to install NumPy separately as it is
already installed with it. You just need to import the package into your Python script with the
help of following −

import numpy as np

On the other hand, if you are using standard Python distribution then NumPy can be installed
using popular python package installer, pip.

pip install NumPy

For more detailed study of NumPy, you can go to the link

www.tutorialspoint.com/numpy/index.htm.

Pandas

It is another useful Python library that makes Python one of the favorite languages for Data
Science. Pandas is basically used for data manipulation, wrangling and analysis. It was
developed by Wes McKinney in 2008. With the help of Pandas, in data processing we can
accomplish the following five steps −

 Load
 Prepare
 Manipulate
 Model
 Analyze

Data representation in Pandas

The entire representation of data in Pandas is done with the help of following three data
structures −

Series − It is basically a one-dimensional ndarray with an axis label which means it is like a
simple array with homogeneous data. For example, the following series is a collection of
integers 1,5,10,15,24,25...
1 5 10 15 24 25 28 36 40 89

Data frame − It is the most useful data structure and used for almost all kind of data
representation and manipulation in pandas. It is basically a two-dimensional data structure
which can contain heterogeneous data. Generally, tabular data is represented by using data
frames. For example, the following table shows the data of students having their names and
roll numbers, age and gender −

Name Roll number Age Gender

Aarav 1 15 Male
Harshit 2 14 Male
Kanika 3 16 Female
Mayank 4 15 Male

Panel − It is a 3-dimensional data structure containing heterogeneous data. It is very difficult

to represent the panel in graphical representation, but it can be illustrated as a container of
DataFrame.

The following table gives us the dimension and description about above mentioned data
structures used in Pandas −

Data Structure Dimension Description

Series 1-D Size immutable, 1-D homogeneous data
DataFrames 2-D Size Mutable, Heterogeneous data in tabular form
Panel 3-D Size-mutable array, container of DataFrame.

We can understand these data structures as the higher dimensional data structure is the
container of lower dimensional data structure.

Installation and Execution

If you are using Anaconda distribution, then no need to install Pandas separately as it is
already installed with it. You just need to import the package into your Python script with the
help of following −

import pandas as pd

On the other hand, if you are using standard Python distribution then Pandas can be installed
using popular python package installer, pip.

pip install Pandas

After installing Pandas, you can import it into your Python script as did above.

Example

The following is an example of creating a series from ndarray by using Pandas −

In [1]: import pandas as pd

In [2]: import numpy as np

In [3]: data = np.array(['g','a','u','r','a','v'])

In [4]: s = pd.Series(data)

In [5]: print (s)

0 g
1 a
2 u
3 r
4 a
5 v

dtype: object

For more detailed study of Pandas you can go to the link

www.tutorialspoint.com/python_pandas/index.htm.

Scikit-learn

Another useful and most important python library for Data Science and machine learning in
Python is Scikit-learn. The following are some features of Scikit-learn that makes it so useful
−

 It is built on NumPy, SciPy, and Matplotlib.

 It is an open source and can be reused under BSD license.
 It is accessible to everybody and can be reused in various contexts.
 Wide range of machine learning algorithms covering major areas of ML like
classification, clustering, regression, dimensionality reduction, model selection etc.
can be implemented with the help of it.

Installation and Execution

If you are using Anaconda distribution, then no need to install Scikit-learn separately as it is
already installed with it. You just need to use the package into your Python script. For
example, with following line of script we are importing dataset of breast cancer patients from
Scikit-learn −

from sklearn.datasets import load_breast_cancer

On the other hand, if you are using standard Python distribution and having NumPy and SciPy
then Scikit-learn can be installed using popular python package installer, pip.

pip install -U scikit-learn

After installing Scikit-learn, you can use it into your Python script as you have done above.