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Showing posts from July, 2017

Python: My Anaconda Don't Want None

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Some people last week were messaging me about what IDE and setup I was using for programming Python and so I thought I would discuss what I have been doing.  Python may be really easy to learn but it can be very tricky to configure everything properly. The vanilla installation Python is pretty simple to use. You can simply write a text file and run it from a terminal. Sadly things start to get a little hairy when you are trying to use many different libraries and can't easily get them installed. You can try installing and managing all packages manually but why not let the work be offloaded to a great piece of software. Enter Anaconda. I discovered Anaconda completely by accident. I was going to manage libraries by myself but after struggling to install all the required software I saw mention of it on a forum. Rarely am I this pleased on an impulse install. Anaconda allowed me to have complete control over my Python and library versions and allowed me to quickly switch b

Data Processing: Matlab, Python or Octave?

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The internet is a sea of servers, data and people. Some of said people have managed to scrape out a living doing data analysis on just about anything they can get their hands on. Data scientists are being hired left right and center to try and improve performance and experience of users. By looking at trends they can determine things like what students in a university course are likely to fail based on their current test scores in the class. This would allow teachers to then help the students before it is too late and they fail courses. The possibilities of data analysis are nearly endless. It could be loading data into neural networks for AIs to analyze, it could be optimizing website layout to increase user visit duration or anything else you can imagine.  With large amounts of data there comes many different ways to process it. You could try it in Excel (and die before you can fill everything in) or you could look to more powerful tools. In my experience with data proces