By now you should have installed everything you need to use Python for data analysis. Let's now begin discussing NumPy, an important package for managing data and performing calculations. Without NumPy, there would not be any data analysis using Python, so understanding NumPy is critical. Our key objective in this chapter is learning to use the tools provided in NumPy.

In this chapter, the following topics will be covered:

• NumPy data types
• Creating arrays
• Slicing arrays
• Mathematics
• Methods and functions

We begin by discussing data types, which are conceptually important when handling NumPy arrays. In this chapter, we will discuss NumPy data types controlled by dtype objects, which are the way NumPy stores and manages data. We'll also briefly introduce NumPy arrays called ndarray and discuss what they do.