[Python Edinburgh] Python for Data Analysis?

[Alisdair Tullo]

Hi,

On Mon, December 22, 2014 8:00 am, Douglas Houston wrote:
> I'm thinking about my planned future use of Python and what I want to do
> with it.  I'm looking to get into data science and using it to train
> machine learning algorithms. The following shows the Coursera courses
> I've signed up to (10 in total) to learn how to do this.
>
>
> Should I use Python (in which case a book like this looks useful), or
> should I use R?

I haven't delved into the R tools available, but at PyData the prevailing
view seemed to be that the scikit-learn module is about as good as it gets
in terms of freely available software for machine learning. (Of course,
this was a meeting dedicated to Python!)

> The Data Science Coursera course is focussed solely on R, so perhaps I
> should just roll with that?

Certainly -- and even if you decide to go with Python the rest of the
time, it will teach you the relevant mathematical techniques and when they
can be applied which is really the core of the matter. pandas was already
mentioned, the pandas DataFrame structure is pretty much the same as an R
data frame, although the syntax is different.

If you're looking to install the Python science stack I'd recommend the
Anaconda distribution:

http://www.continuum.io/downloads

Good Luck

Alisdair

> Any one have any advice?
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