Data Wrangling with Python

Book excerpt: How do you take your data analysis skills beyond Excel to the next level? By learning just enough Python to get stuff done. This hands-on guide shows non-programmers like you how to process information that’s initially too messy or difficult to access. You don't need to know a thing about the Python programming language to get started. Through various step-by-step exercises, you’ll learn how to acquire, clean, analyze, and present data efficiently. You’ll also discover how to automate your data process, schedule file- editing and clean-up tasks, process larger datasets, and create compelling stories with data you obtain. Quickly learn basic Python syntax, data types, and language concepts Work with both machine-readable and human-consumable data Scrape websites and APIs to find a bounty of useful information Clean and format data to eliminate duplicates and errors in your datasets Learn when to standardize data and when to test and script data cleanup Explore and analyze your datasets with new Python libraries and techniques Use Python solutions to automate your entire data-wrangling process