Move from Excel to Python with Pandas Transcripts
Chapter: Welcome to the course
Lecture: Why Python?
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Python has been around since the late 19 nineties but has exploded in popularity recently
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This chart, from a Stack Overflow survey shows the surge in Pythons popularity over the
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past five years. Popularity in and of itself is not a reason to use the
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language, however, popularity means there's a large pool of users documentation libraries to solve
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various tests. Part of the reason for Pythons popularity is that it is easy to
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learn. Python has many language characteristics to make it easy for brand new programmers or
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new to Python programmers to get up to speed and productive in a reasonable amount of
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time, one of the areas where Python has improved in the past few years. Is installing it on windows, Python,
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has always worked on Linux and Mac and could work on Windows but sometimes challenging to get working. However, in recent years,
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even Microsoft has taken a supportive stance on getting Python installed. In fact, they have official documentation,
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describes how to use Python for development windows. Finally, Python has always been considered a good glue language for automating tasks.
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Within the past five years, the Python ecosystem has grown to include libraries such as
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pandas, which are excellent for many of the tasks Excel struggles with the pandas Library
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constrain line many of the data wrangling and analysis task that excel is not suited for.
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In addition, pandas and other libraries like NumPy and Sci-kit-Learn our industrial
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strength data science tools that can grow with you as you progress your skills.