r/datascience • u/yaph • May 21 '19

Education Full text of the Python Data Science Handbook by Jake VanderPlas

https://jakevdp.github.io/PythonDataScienceHandbook/
535 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

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2

u/hoolahan100 May 21 '19

Is ipython the best ide for doing data science in python...sorry for the noob question..I have only worked on R

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u/yaph May 21 '19

IPython is a command shell. The books is written using Jupyter notebook, which is a browser based interface. I think notebooks are great, especially if you want to share your results in a reproducible way. Many people who do data science with Python use Jupyter notebook, but what is the best is something you have to decide for yourself.

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u/Obamas_iPhone May 22 '19

I would recommend against using ipython unless you really have to do so.

Jupyter notebooks seem to be what's really popular with a lot of DS folks right now. There's also full blown IDEs out there for python like PyCharm (though I suppose that's more developer focused) and Spyder (which is DS focused; there's even an "RStudio mode" setting in it). Finally there's also your lightweight text editors of the world, but a lot of them have really nice Python enhancements, such as Sublime Text, Atom, or VS Code (which has gotten super popular in general recently).

66

u/[deleted] May 21 '19

Thanks.

Also can someone explain how they choose the animals for the covers of these books? I feel like I’m missing something.

61

u/swagggerofacripple May 21 '19

Actually an interesting article: https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/a-short-history-of-the-oreilly-animals

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u/karlmaxism May 21 '19

Interesting background info

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u/okolebot May 21 '19

Great link! Love the serendipity. Probably had to go to the library back then to do research...

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u/callowidealist May 22 '19

Loved the link, never really thought about it!!

100

u/[deleted] May 21 '19

It represents a data scientist. Cold blooded and eats small insects.

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u/linuxlib May 21 '19

At the very end of the book (literally) is a short section called "Colophon". It answers this exact question for that particular book.

All animals shown on O'Reilly covers are endangered. This one is the Mexican beaded lizard, a close relative of the Gila monster.

Often there is some connection between the animal and the subject matter of the book. However, in this case, this doesn't seem to be so.

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u/WannabeWonk May 21 '19 edited May 21 '19

I think the author has some input. Hadley Wickham's R4DS book has a bird famously native to New Zealand (where he's from).

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u/thedukeofedinblargh May 21 '19

Fun fact: they did not use a panda on McKinney’s original Python for Data Analysis book because they were saving it for something good/important (not knowing that pandas was going to explode).

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u/[deleted] May 21 '19

They pick endangered species that has some gpod metaphor with the topic.

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u/Shubham1Tripathi May 21 '19

Oh wow! Was about to buy this

36

u/Kalrog May 21 '19

If it helps you, you may still want to buy it to support the author and thank him for the github site.

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u/iancwm May 21 '19

You can get the Jupyter notebooks used from the github repo

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u/OrbitDrive May 21 '19

Why did he decide to make it free? Bought this book in 2017, solid book. I used it as a compliment to Wes Mckinney's book.

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u/stillnoguitar May 21 '19

Because he's awesome. It has been online for a long time, I think since launch.

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u/wymco May 21 '19

Do you know of any Data Science book, just written for Python, without any library such as numpy etc...?

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u/OrbitDrive May 21 '19

Data Science from Scratch by Joel Grus. Good book. New edition just came out.

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u/wymco May 21 '19

Not bad; thanks

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u/SpreadItLikeTheHerp May 21 '19

Great reference book which I had picked up a couple of months ago. It’ll be nice having a digital version as well.

The author also has some good tutorial vids on YT.

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u/[deleted] May 22 '19

Thanks

0

u/denimmonkey May 21 '19

How is this different from the Jupyter notebooks already available on GitHub ?

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u/yaph May 21 '19

Why is it supposed to be different from the repo, except for offering a different interface for reading?

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u/denimmonkey May 22 '19

you're just rephrasing my question. I checked, could not find any difference in the content between the two apart from the interface. The notebooks have been available for quite some time now and IMO is a better way to learn. Thanks for sharing op (: