Python Data Cleaning and Preparation Best Practices


Book Description

Take your data preparation skills to the next level by converting any type of data asset into a structured, formatted, and readily usable dataset Key Features Maximize the value of your data through effective data cleaning methods Enhance your data skills using strategies for handling structured and unstructured data Elevate the quality of your data products by testing and validating your data pipelines Purchase of the print or Kindle book includes a free PDF eBook Book DescriptionProfessionals face several challenges in effectively leveraging data in today's data-driven world. One of the main challenges is the low quality of data products, often caused by inaccurate, incomplete, or inconsistent data. Another significant challenge is the lack of skills among data professionals to analyze unstructured data, leading to valuable insights being missed that are difficult or impossible to obtain from structured data alone. To help you tackle these challenges, this book will take you on a journey through the upstream data pipeline, which includes the ingestion of data from various sources, the validation and profiling of data for high-quality end tables, and writing data to different sinks. You’ll focus on structured data by performing essential tasks, such as cleaning and encoding datasets and handling missing values and outliers, before learning how to manipulate unstructured data with simple techniques. You’ll also be introduced to a variety of natural language processing techniques, from tokenization to vector models, as well as techniques to structure images, videos, and audio. By the end of this book, you’ll be proficient in data cleaning and preparation techniques for both structured and unstructured data.What you will learn Ingest data from different sources and write it to the required sinks Profile and validate data pipelines for better quality control Get up to speed with grouping, merging, and joining structured data Handle missing values and outliers in structured datasets Implement techniques to manipulate and transform time series data Apply structure to text, image, voice, and other unstructured data Who this book is for Whether you're a data analyst, data engineer, data scientist, or a data professional responsible for data preparation and cleaning, this book is for you. Working knowledge of Python programming is needed to get the most out of this book.




Best Practices in Data Cleaning


Book Description

Many researchers jump straight from data collection to data analysis without realizing how analyses and hypothesis tests can go profoundly wrong without clean data. This book provides a clear, step-by-step process of examining and cleaning data in order to decrease error rates and increase both the power and replicability of results. Jason W. Osborne, author of Best Practices in Quantitative Methods (SAGE, 2008) provides easily-implemented suggestions that are research-based and will motivate change in practice by empirically demonstrating, for each topic, the benefits of following best practices and the potential consequences of not following these guidelines. If your goal is to do the best research you can do, draw conclusions that are most likely to be accurate representations of the population(s) you wish to speak about, and report results that are most likely to be replicated by other researchers, then this basic guidebook will be indispensible.




Python Data Cleaning Cookbook


Book Description

Discover how to describe your data in detail, identify data issues, and find out how to solve them using commonly used techniques and tips and tricks Key FeaturesGet well-versed with various data cleaning techniques to reveal key insightsManipulate data of different complexities to shape them into the right form as per your business needsClean, monitor, and validate large data volumes to diagnose problems before moving on to data analysisBook Description Getting clean data to reveal insights is essential, as directly jumping into data analysis without proper data cleaning may lead to incorrect results. This book shows you tools and techniques that you can apply to clean and handle data with Python. You'll begin by getting familiar with the shape of data by using practices that can be deployed routinely with most data sources. Then, the book teaches you how to manipulate data to get it into a useful form. You'll also learn how to filter and summarize data to gain insights and better understand what makes sense and what does not, along with discovering how to operate on data to address the issues you've identified. Moving on, you'll perform key tasks, such as handling missing values, validating errors, removing duplicate data, monitoring high volumes of data, and handling outliers and invalid dates. Next, you'll cover recipes on using supervised learning and Naive Bayes analysis to identify unexpected values and classification errors, and generate visualizations for exploratory data analysis (EDA) to visualize unexpected values. Finally, you'll build functions and classes that you can reuse without modification when you have new data. By the end of this Python book, you'll be equipped with all the key skills that you need to clean data and diagnose problems within it. What you will learnFind out how to read and analyze data from a variety of sourcesProduce summaries of the attributes of data frames, columns, and rowsFilter data and select columns of interest that satisfy given criteriaAddress messy data issues, including working with dates and missing valuesImprove your productivity in Python pandas by using method chainingUse visualizations to gain additional insights and identify potential data issuesEnhance your ability to learn what is going on in your dataBuild user-defined functions and classes to automate data cleaningWho this book is for This book is for anyone looking for ways to handle messy, duplicate, and poor data using different Python tools and techniques. The book takes a recipe-based approach to help you to learn how to clean and manage data. Working knowledge of Python programming is all you need to get the most out of the book.




Cleaning Data for Effective Data Science


Book Description

Think about your data intelligently and ask the right questions Key FeaturesMaster data cleaning techniques necessary to perform real-world data science and machine learning tasksSpot common problems with dirty data and develop flexible solutions from first principlesTest and refine your newly acquired skills through detailed exercises at the end of each chapterBook Description Data cleaning is the all-important first step to successful data science, data analysis, and machine learning. If you work with any kind of data, this book is your go-to resource, arming you with the insights and heuristics experienced data scientists had to learn the hard way. In a light-hearted and engaging exploration of different tools, techniques, and datasets real and fictitious, Python veteran David Mertz teaches you the ins and outs of data preparation and the essential questions you should be asking of every piece of data you work with. Using a mixture of Python, R, and common command-line tools, Cleaning Data for Effective Data Science follows the data cleaning pipeline from start to end, focusing on helping you understand the principles underlying each step of the process. You'll look at data ingestion of a vast range of tabular, hierarchical, and other data formats, impute missing values, detect unreliable data and statistical anomalies, and generate synthetic features. The long-form exercises at the end of each chapter let you get hands-on with the skills you've acquired along the way, also providing a valuable resource for academic courses. What you will learnIngest and work with common data formats like JSON, CSV, SQL and NoSQL databases, PDF, and binary serialized data structuresUnderstand how and why we use tools such as pandas, SciPy, scikit-learn, Tidyverse, and BashApply useful rules and heuristics for assessing data quality and detecting bias, like Benford’s law and the 68-95-99.7 ruleIdentify and handle unreliable data and outliers, examining z-score and other statistical propertiesImpute sensible values into missing data and use sampling to fix imbalancesUse dimensionality reduction, quantization, one-hot encoding, and other feature engineering techniques to draw out patterns in your dataWork carefully with time series data, performing de-trending and interpolationWho this book is for This book is designed to benefit software developers, data scientists, aspiring data scientists, teachers, and students who work with data. If you want to improve your rigor in data hygiene or are looking for a refresher, this book is for you. Basic familiarity with statistics, general concepts in machine learning, knowledge of a programming language (Python or R), and some exposure to data science are helpful.







Hands-On Data Preprocessing in Python


Book Description

Get your raw data cleaned up and ready for processing to design better data analytic solutions Key FeaturesDevelop the skills to perform data cleaning, data integration, data reduction, and data transformationMake the most of your raw data with powerful data transformation and massaging techniquesPerform thorough data cleaning, including dealing with missing values and outliersBook Description Hands-On Data Preprocessing is a primer on the best data cleaning and preprocessing techniques, written by an expert who's developed college-level courses on data preprocessing and related subjects. With this book, you'll be equipped with the optimum data preprocessing techniques from multiple perspectives, ensuring that you get the best possible insights from your data. You'll learn about different technical and analytical aspects of data preprocessing – data collection, data cleaning, data integration, data reduction, and data transformation – and get to grips with implementing them using the open source Python programming environment. The hands-on examples and easy-to-follow chapters will help you gain a comprehensive articulation of data preprocessing, its whys and hows, and identify opportunities where data analytics could lead to more effective decision making. As you progress through the chapters, you'll also understand the role of data management systems and technologies for effective analytics and how to use APIs to pull data. By the end of this Python data preprocessing book, you'll be able to use Python to read, manipulate, and analyze data; perform data cleaning, integration, reduction, and transformation techniques, and handle outliers or missing values to effectively prepare data for analytic tools. What you will learnUse Python to perform analytics functions on your dataUnderstand the role of databases and how to effectively pull data from databasesPerform data preprocessing steps defined by your analytics goalsRecognize and resolve data integration challengesIdentify the need for data reduction and execute itDetect opportunities to improve analytics with data transformationWho this book is for This book is for junior and senior data analysts, business intelligence professionals, engineering undergraduates, and data enthusiasts looking to perform preprocessing and data cleaning on large amounts of data. You don't need any prior experience with data preprocessing to get started with this book. However, basic programming skills, such as working with variables, conditionals, and loops, along with beginner-level knowledge of Python and simple analytics experience, are a prerequisite.




Python for Data Analysis


Book Description

Get complete instructions for manipulating, processing, cleaning, and crunching datasets in Python. Updated for Python 3.6, the second edition of this hands-on guide is packed with practical case studies that show you how to solve a broad set of data analysis problems effectively. You’ll learn the latest versions of pandas, NumPy, IPython, and Jupyter in the process. Written by Wes McKinney, the creator of the Python pandas project, this book is a practical, modern introduction to data science tools in Python. It’s ideal for analysts new to Python and for Python programmers new to data science and scientific computing. Data files and related material are available on GitHub. Use the IPython shell and Jupyter notebook for exploratory computing Learn basic and advanced features in NumPy (Numerical Python) Get started with data analysis tools in the pandas library Use flexible tools to load, clean, transform, merge, and reshape data Create informative visualizations with matplotlib Apply the pandas groupby facility to slice, dice, and summarize datasets Analyze and manipulate regular and irregular time series data Learn how to solve real-world data analysis problems with thorough, detailed examples




Data Preparation for Machine Learning


Book Description

Data preparation involves transforming raw data in to a form that can be modeled using machine learning algorithms. Cut through the equations, Greek letters, and confusion, and discover the specialized data preparation techniques that you need to know to get the most out of your data on your next project. Using clear explanations, standard Python libraries, and step-by-step tutorial lessons, you will discover how to confidently and effectively prepare your data for predictive modeling with machine learning.




Hands-On Data Analysis with Pandas


Book Description

Get to grips with pandas by working with real datasets and master data discovery, data manipulation, data preparation, and handling data for analytical tasks Key Features Perform efficient data analysis and manipulation tasks using pandas 1.x Apply pandas to different real-world domains with the help of step-by-step examples Make the most of pandas as an effective data exploration tool Book DescriptionExtracting valuable business insights is no longer a ‘nice-to-have’, but an essential skill for anyone who handles data in their enterprise. Hands-On Data Analysis with Pandas is here to help beginners and those who are migrating their skills into data science get up to speed in no time. This book will show you how to analyze your data, get started with machine learning, and work effectively with the Python libraries often used for data science, such as pandas, NumPy, matplotlib, seaborn, and scikit-learn. Using real-world datasets, you will learn how to use the pandas library to perform data wrangling to reshape, clean, and aggregate your data. Then, you will learn how to conduct exploratory data analysis by calculating summary statistics and visualizing the data to find patterns. In the concluding chapters, you will explore some applications of anomaly detection, regression, clustering, and classification using scikit-learn to make predictions based on past data. This updated edition will equip you with the skills you need to use pandas 1.x to efficiently perform various data manipulation tasks, reliably reproduce analyses, and visualize your data for effective decision making – valuable knowledge that can be applied across multiple domains.What you will learn Understand how data analysts and scientists gather and analyze data Perform data analysis and data wrangling using Python Combine, group, and aggregate data from multiple sources Create data visualizations with pandas, matplotlib, and seaborn Apply machine learning algorithms to identify patterns and make predictions Use Python data science libraries to analyze real-world datasets Solve common data representation and analysis problems using pandas Build Python scripts, modules, and packages for reusable analysis code Who this book is for This book is for data science beginners, data analysts, and Python developers who want to explore each stage of data analysis and scientific computing using a wide range of datasets. Data scientists looking to implement pandas in their machine learning workflow will also find plenty of valuable know-how as they progress. You’ll find it easier to follow along with this book if you have a working knowledge of the Python programming language, but a Python crash-course tutorial is provided in the code bundle for anyone who needs a refresher.




Pandas Cookbook


Book Description

Over 95 hands-on recipes to leverage the power of pandas for efficient scientific computation and data analysis About This Book Use the power of pandas to solve most complex scientific computing problems with ease Leverage fast, robust data structures in pandas to gain useful insights from your data Practical, easy to implement recipes for quick solutions to common problems in data using pandas Who This Book Is For This book is for data scientists, analysts and Python developers who wish to explore data analysis and scientific computing in a practical, hands-on manner. The recipes included in this book are suitable for both novice and advanced users, and contain helpful tips, tricks and caveats wherever necessary. Some understanding of pandas will be helpful, but not mandatory. What You Will Learn Master the fundamentals of pandas to quickly begin exploring any dataset Isolate any subset of data by properly selecting and querying the data Split data into independent groups before applying aggregations and transformations to each group Restructure data into tidy form to make data analysis and visualization easier Prepare real-world messy datasets for machine learning Combine and merge data from different sources through pandas SQL-like operations Utilize pandas unparalleled time series functionality Create beautiful and insightful visualizations through pandas direct hooks to Matplotlib and Seaborn In Detail This book will provide you with unique, idiomatic, and fun recipes for both fundamental and advanced data manipulation tasks with pandas. Some recipes focus on achieving a deeper understanding of basic principles, or comparing and contrasting two similar operations. Other recipes will dive deep into a particular dataset, uncovering new and unexpected insights along the way. The pandas library is massive, and it's common for frequent users to be unaware of many of its more impressive features. The official pandas documentation, while thorough, does not contain many useful examples of how to piece together multiple commands like one would do during an actual analysis. This book guides you, as if you were looking over the shoulder of an expert, through practical situations that you are highly likely to encounter. Many advanced recipes combine several different features across the pandas library to generate results. Style and approach The author relies on his vast experience teaching pandas in a professional setting to deliver very detailed explanations for each line of code in all of the recipes. All code and dataset explanations exist in Jupyter Notebooks, an excellent interface for exploring data.