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Hi Meenal,<br><br>The best and most expressive language for Data Mining/Predictive modeling is and continues to be R,<br>by a long shot. (I'm a longtime Python user who subsequently learned R so I'm unbiased.)<br><br>Python + <a href="http://pandas.pydata.org/">pandas</a> + scikit-learn is a small subset of corresponding R functionality. Wes McKinney (pandas lead)<br>is actively migrating R functionality into Python, but they have ways to go, and need contributors.<br>pandas basically gives you the R constructs data.frame + timeseries (timeseries is mainly for financial people)<br>plus slicing, indexing and subsetting.<br>pandas is aiming for performance and scalability.<br>Also, the excellent ggplot2 visualization library is being ported from R to Python, expected this fall(? I was told?)<br>(Hadley Wickham, the creator of the outstanding packages plyr & ggplot2 gave a great talk in SF<br>last week btw.)<br>Wes McKinney presents some solid "Why not R?" arguments on <a href="http://pandas.pydata.org/">pandas.pydata.org</a><br>(performance, scalability, no copyleft licensing, Python is by far a better general-purpose language for production systems)<br><a href="http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/whatsnew.html">pandas major release 0.8.0</a> was just released last week so I'm curious as to experiences from anyone who's used it yet.<br><br>Your question got a good response so I propose "Python for Predictive Analytics/Data Mining"<br>
would be a good meeting topic.<br>
<br>(Btw next time Wes McKinney comes out west we should invite him to talk. He was at StrataConf this spring.)<br><br>PS If by any chance you're asking because you're competing on Kaggle.com, drop me a line privately.<br><br>Best regards,<br>Stephen<br> </div></body>
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