Pandas Cookbook: Recipes for Scientific Computing, Time Series Analysis and Data Visualization using Python

This book is over 500 pages, but the layout is outstanding.I am the type of person to read 1-3 page of a book each day at least.The book has chapters, topics, and subsections.Each subsection is organized the same throughout the ENTIRE book...Chater 1... Topic 1 1. Getting ready 2. How to do it. 3. How it works... 4. There's more... 5. See also Topic 2 1. Getting ready 2. How to do it. 3. How it works... 4. There's more... 5. See also. etc.Meaning, that you can pick up from anywhere and learn a little piece at a time with a consistent layout for each topic.I HIGHLY recommend this book, not because it's easy, but it streamlines the information for you in a consistent manner. You can make a "class" or "course" based on one subsection at a time and do it consisitently, developing your skils. Because we ALL understand simple things get done and consistent actions produce the results in our lives.Much luck in your decision to purchase this book for yourself. ^__^

I should’ve started with this book. The examples are concise and helpful. If you’re already familiar with Python and just want to get a better understanding of how to manipulate your data with Pandas- this is an excellent resource.With so many tools and resources out there for data analysis, it’s hard to find something this detailed on just the Pandas library. The book goes beyond the Pandas documentation and provides tips for best practices and links to external resources if you want to dig deeper into a specific topic.

This book has helped me out a lot. I am new to python and pandas but this book has made things much clearer. Good explanations with example of codes. Author also explains how each part of the code works and reinforces material learned in previous chapters. Was intimidated by some of the chapters before i started reading once i got to those parts I was no longer worried if i would understand the subject matter.

Splitting this review into two parts: 5 for Petrou's content in the recipes themselves, 1 for Packt publisher's cookbook format which severely cripples the content with its lack of relevant indexing & labeling. Packt seems obsessed with cut/paste of non-value-added structure titles (Getting Ready, How to do It, How it works, There's more, See also). Those 5 phases are repeated 98 times in the Table of contents (blowing it up to 15 pages instead of concise 3). The skimpy index adds little value to find the relevant sections, unlike any well designed cookbook. Scanning the book is frustrating because the 98 repetitions of the structure headings are bigger and bolder than any other content. I've actually had to take the time to pencil in useful headings on the top-right corner of the pages and essentially create my own index so I can find what I need. I spent the time because the examples were useful and relevant -- if I could only find them when I need them...

This is an excellent book if you want to learn pandas and if you want to understand pandas. It covers all cases, clearly explains what and why pandas do, and the chapters are organized really well and it depends on you if you just want to stay on surface or go deeper.

Gives a lot of practical code in a logical order that makes it great for applying to your own data analysis. Each code recipe has explanations of what is going on as it executes that helps make things much easier to understand.

On Kindle Cloud reader with Firefox (latest), after the first 170 pages, the formatting becomes narrower with each page. Eventually it shows one character per line in a single column. I'm sure Amazon, Firefox, and Packt will put the blame on each other. Packt also disallows downloading the book, so I can't try other options for viewing. Bottom line is I paid for something I can't read.

I wish I could have thumbed through this book before I bought it, but alas the bookstores in my area don't carry many computer books, and few on Pandas. I found this book to be silly in its layout, with the structure of each chapter repeating Getting Ready, How to Do It, How it works, and There's More. The text ends up being needlessly wordy without adding a lot of information. And the index is a mere four pages, so if you don't remember exactly where you read something then you have to thumb through it page by page. I got past about page 100 doing the examples and then quit... I just wasn't learning that much. I now use the Pandas cheat sheets for most tasks and the online reference for details. I think there's still a crying need for a beginners-level Pandas reference text, but this isn't it.

Great book ! help me a lot

mainly a rehash of material generally available

Best forbeginers

First of all I hate the binding of this book. The pages just jumps to close the book due to this third rate binding.Anyways, the book covers lot of concepts and that is why 3 stars. Where the book fails is even after finishing the book you don't feel like you have developed an expertise on Pandas. The author uses so many methods suddenly that it is upto the reader to cram something at each step. A good approach would be to first explain functions and process and then using those methods to solve complex problems. Sudden appearance of unknown methods does not help at all.Also sometimes the author present simple things in an extremely complex manner.I really don't understand the need of that. Also the datasets are extremely complex many a times and are difficult to obtain over net.Overall, I learnt many things but I need to revise this once and then go through some online course to claim expertise in Pandas.

Its a good book. But I could not find a link to the data sets he used. Any pointers?