Python Libraries for Data Science

Tamanna
7 min readApr 8, 2022

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Python is one of the most widely utilized languages for data science jobs by both data scientists and software developers. It can be used to forecast results, automate jobs, streamline processes, and provide business intelligence. There are a few open-source libraries that make working with Python data a lot easier. The following is a list of the most essential data science libraries available in the Python language, including data processing, modeling, and visualization.

Data Mining

1. BeautifulSoup

BeautifulSoup is a well-known web crawling and data scraping Python library. BeautifulSoup can help you scrape data from a website that isn’t available in a standard CSV or API format and organize it into the format you require.

2. Scrapy

Scrapy is a popular Python data science library that aids in the development of crawling programs (spider bots) that can gather structured data from the web, such as URLs or contact information. It’s an excellent tool for scraping data for Python machine learning models, for example. It is used by developers to collect data from APIs. In the design of its interface, this full-fledged framework adheres to the Don’t Repeat Yourself concept. As a result, the tool encourages users to design general-purpose code that can be reused to build and scale huge crawlers.

3. SQLAlchemy

SQLAlchemy is a Python database toolkit that makes it easy to access data warehouses. It includes the most extensively used high-performance database access patterns. The two primary components of SQLAlchemy are SQLAlchemy ORM and SQLAlchemy Core. SQLAlchemy core offers a layer of abstraction to Python database APIs and features. It also provides users with SQL statements and schema. SQLAlchemy ORM is an object-relational mapper that is self-contained. SQLAlchemy helps programmers to maintain control over their databases while also automating repetitive tasks.

Data Processing and Modeling

1. NumPy

NumPy (Numerical Python) is an excellent tool for doing scientific computations and simple and complex array operations. The library has a lot of useful features for working with n-arrays and matrices in Python. It facilitates the processing of arrays that store values of the same data type and simplifies array math operations (including vectorization). In reality, using the NumPy array type to vectorize mathematical operations improves speed and reduces execution time.

2. Pandas

Pandas is a package designed to make working with “labeled” and “relational” data more easy for developers. It’s built on two basic data structures: “Series” (one-dimensional, like a list of things) and “Data Frames” (multi-dimensional, like a table of contents) (two-dimensional, like a table with multiple columns). Converting data structures to DataFrame objects, handling missing data, adding/deleting columns from DataFrame, imputing missing files, and visualizing data with histogram or plot box are all possible with Pandas. It’s a must-have for data manipulation, visualization, and wrangling.

3. SciPy

Modules for linear algebra, integration, optimization, and statistics are included in this helpful package. Its fundamental feature is based on NumPy, hence its arrays are NumPy-based. SciPy is ideal for a wide range of scientific programming tasks (science, mathematics, and engineering). In submodules, it provides efficient numerical algorithms such as numerical optimization, integration, and others. Working with this library is a breeze thanks to the extensive documentation.

4. Scikit-learn

This is the industry standard for Python-based data science initiatives. Scikits is a collection of packages in the SciPy Stack that were designed to perform certain tasks, such as image processing. Scikit-learn exposes a succinct interface to the most common machine learning algorithms by leveraging SciPy’s math operations. Clustering, regression, model selection, dimensionality reduction, and classification are some of the common machine learning and data mining activities that data scientists utilize it for. Another benefit? It comes with high-quality documentation and performs well.

5. Keras

Keras is a fantastic library for modeling and creating neural networks. It’s simple to use and provides developers with a lot of flexibility. Other packages (Theano or TensorFlow) are used as backends in the library. Microsoft also included CNTK (Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit) as an additional backend. It’s an excellent choice if you want to experiment fast with small systems — the minimalist design approach pays off!

6. TensorFlow

TensorFlow is a prominent Python machine learning and deep learning framework that was created at Google Brain. It’s the ideal tool for a variety of jobs, including object recognition and speech recognition. It aids in the development of artificial neural networks that must deal with a large number of data sets. Various layer-helpers (tflearn, tf-slim, skflow) are included in the library, making it even more functional. TensorFlow is constantly evolving with new updates, including fixes for any security flaws and enhancements to TensorFlow’s GPU integration.

7. XGBoost

Under the Gradient Boosting framework, use this library to develop machine learning algorithms. XGBoost is lightweight, adaptable, and effective. It provides parallel tree boosting, which aids teams in resolving a variety of data science issues. Another benefit is that developers can execute the same code on Hadoop, SGE, and MPI, among other distributed platforms.

8. PyTorch

PyTorch is a framework for data scientists who want to quickly complete deep learning jobs. The tool enables tensor computations to be performed with GPU acceleration. It’s also used for other things, like constructing dynamic computational networks and automatically calculating gradients. Torch is an open-source deep learning library written in C with a Lua wrapper. PyTorch is based on Torch.

9. OpenCV

OpenCV is a free machine learning and computer vision library licensed under the BSD license. It provides a shared architecture for computer vision applications in order to simplify computer vision implementation in commercial goods.

Data Visualization

1. Plotly

Plot.ly is a web-based data visualization tool that includes a number of handy out-of-the-box visualizations that can be found on the Plot.ly website. In interactive web applications, the library performs admirably. The library’s designers are working on adding new visuals and features to allow multiple linked views, animation, and crosstalk integration.

2. Matplotlib

This is a common data visualization library that aids in the creation of two-dimensional diagrams and graphs (histograms, scatterplots, non-Cartesian coordinates graphs). Matplotlib is a plotting library that is particularly useful in data science projects since it provides an object-oriented API for integrating plots into applications. Python can now compete with scientific tools like MatLab and Mathematica owing to this package. However, while utilizing this library to create complex visualizations, developers will have to write more code than usual. It’s worth noting that major charting libraries are compatible with Matplotlib.

3. Seaborn

Seaborn is a Python machine learning tool for displaying statistical models — heatmaps and other forms of visualizations that summarize data and depict overall distributions. It is based on Matplotlib. When you use this library, you receive access to a large collection of visualizations (including complex ones like time series, joint plots, and violin diagrams)

4. Bokeh

Using JavaScript widgets, this toolkit makes it easy to create dynamic and scalable infographics inside browsers. Bokeh is not dependent on Matplotlib in any way. It is related to Data-Driven Documents in that it focuses on interactivity and offers visualizations through modern browsers (d3.js). It comes with a number of graphs, as well as interactivity features (such as linking plots and adding JavaScript widgets) and styling options.

5. pydot

This library assists in the creation of both oriented and non-oriented graphs. It acts as a Graphviz interface (written in pure Python). With the aid of this library, you can quickly display the structure of graphs. When working on algorithms based on neural networks and decision trees, this comes in handy.

6. Ggplot

Ggplot is a Python data visualization toolkit based on the R programming language’s ggplot2 implementation. Using a high-level API, Ggplot can build data visualizations like as bar charts, pie charts, histograms, scatterplots, error charts, and more. You can also combine several data visualization components or layers into a single visualization. ggplot handles the rest when you define which variables should be mapped to which components of the plot, allowing you to focus on analyzing rather than building representations. In contrast, ggplot does not allow you to create highly customized visualizations.

Summary

Many other tools are available in Python to aid in the completion of machine learning tasks and the development of algorithms. Many of these tools will be used by data scientists and software engineers working on Python-based data science projects, as they are necessary for developing high-performing ML models.

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Tamanna

Numbers have an important story to tell. They rely on you to give them a voice.