What you need for this book

There are not too many requirements to get started. You will need a Python programming environment installed on your system. Under Linux and Mac OS X, Python is usually installed by default. Installation on Windows is supported by an excellent installer provided and maintained by the community.

This book uses a recent Python 2, but many examples will work with Python 3 as well.

The versions of the libraries used in this book are the following: NumPy 1.9.2, Pandas 0.16.2, matplotlib 1.4.3, tables 3.2.2, pymongo 3.0.3, redis 2.10.3, and scikit-learn 0.16.1. As these packages are all hosted on PyPI, the Python package index, they can be easily installed with pip. To install NumPy, you would write:

$ pip install numpy

If you are not using them already, we suggest you take a look at virtual environments for managing isolating Python environment on your computer. For Python 2, there are two packages of interest there: virtualenv and virtualenvwrapper. Since Python 3.3, there is a tool in the standard library called pyvenv (https://docs.python.org/3/library/venv.html), which serves the same purpose.

Most libraries will have an attribute for the version, so if you already have a library installed, you can quickly check its version:

>>> import redis
>>> redis.__version__
'2.10.3'

This works well for most libraries. A few, such as pymongo, use a different attribute (pymongo uses just version, without the underscores).

While all the examples can be run interactively in a Python shell, we recommend using IPython. IPython started as a more versatile Python shell, but has since evolved into a powerful tool for exploration and sharing. We used IPython 4.0.0 with Python 2.7.10. IPython is a great way to work interactively with Python, be it in the terminal or in the browser.