by Michael Heydt

Learning pandas.pdf


Get to grips with pandas—a versatile
and high-performance Python library for
data manipulation, analysis, and discovery


This book is about learning to use pandas, an open source library for Python, which
was created to enable Python to easily manipulate and perform powerful statistical
and mathematical analyses on tabular and multidimensional datasets. The design of
pandas and its power combined with the familiarity of Python have created explosive
growth in its usage over the last several years, particularly among financial firms as
well as those simply looking for practical tools for statistical and data analysis.
While there exist many excellent examples of using pandas to solve many
domain-specific problems, it can be difficult to find a cohesive set of examples
in a form that allows one to effectively learn and apply the features of pandas.
The information required to learn practical skills in using pandas is distributed
across many websites, slide shares, and videos, and is generally not in a form
that gives an integrated guide to all of the features with practical examples in
an easy-to-understand and applicable fashion.
This book is therefore intended to be a go-to reference for learning pandas. It will
take you all the way from installation, through to creating one- and two-dimensional
indexed data structures, to grouping data and slicing-and-dicing them, with common
analyses used to demonstrate derivation of useful results. This will include the
loading and saving of data from resources that are local and Internet-based and
creating effective data visualizations that provide instant ability to visually realize
insights into the meaning previously hidden within complex data.