Python for data analytics

Python is an increasingly popular high-level programming language that is particularly well suited for data analytics and machine learning applications. The ample availability of analytics-related libraries and its easy-to-learn syntax make it the preferred choice for many data science practitioners.

The story behind Python's name has nothing to do with snakes. Its creator, Dutch programmer Guido van Rossum, was a big fan of the 1970s BBC comedy series "Monty Python's Flying Circus." So he picked Python as the name of the project to honor the irreverent genius of the British comedy troupe running that show.

As this book focuses on visual programming, we will not go through any thorough explanation of coding principles. Instead, the purpose of this section is to let you see Python in action on a familiar problem and get some perspective on how it can be used in our everyday work. We will first go through a script...