Data Preprocessing:
Cleaning the data: This could involve handling missing values (e.g., using imputation
or dropping rows), outliers, or duplicates.
Feature scaling: Standardization or normalization (especially important for models
like KNN, SVM, and neural networks).
Encoding categorical variables: Converting categorical data to numerical format
using techniques like one-hot encoding or label encoding.
Feature engineering: Creating new features or selecting the most relevant ones to
improve model performance.
Popular Python libraries for this:
pandas for data manipulation
sklearn.preprocessing for scaling and encoding
numpy for numerical operations
Working with Visual Studio Code:
Install Python extensions in VS Code for better functionality, such as Python, Jupyter,
and Pylance.
Make sure to set up a virtual environment to manage dependencies. You can use venv
or conda for this.
Use Jupyter notebooks within VS Code for interactive data exploration and testing
out models.
Kaggle Dataset Exercises:
Kaggle is a goldmine for learning. You can explore competitions, kernels (notebooks),
and datasets for practice.
Download the datasets and load them into your Python environment. After
preprocessing the data, you can experiment with different models (e.g., Decision Trees,
Random Forest, XGBoost, or even neural networks if you’re feeling adventurous).
Getting Started with a Kaggle Exercise:
Download a dataset from Kaggle, say the Titanic dataset (for classification) or House
Prices (for regression).
Start by exploring the data (using pandas and matplotlib/seaborn for visualization).
Preprocess the data: handle missing values, encode categories, and scale the features.
Train a basic model (Logistic Regression for Titanic, Linear Regression for House
Prices) using sklearn and evaluate it.
Gradually improve your model by experimenting with different algorithms,
hyperparameters, and feature engineering.
Example Pipeline in Python (Titanic Dataset):
# 1. Import Libraries
import pandas as pd
import numpy as np
import seaborn as sns
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from sklearn.model_selection import train_test_split
from sklearn.preprocessing import StandardScaler
from sklearn.linear_model import LogisticRegression
from sklearn.metrics import accuracy_score
# 2. Load Data
data = pd.read_csv('titanic.csv')
# 3. Data Preprocessing
# Fill missing values
data['Age'].fillna(data['Age'].mean(), inplace=True)
data['Embarked'].fillna(data['Embarked'].mode()[0], inplace=True)
# Encode categorical columns
data = pd.get_dummies(data, columns=['Sex', 'Embarked'])
# Select features and target
X = data[['Pclass', 'Age', 'SibSp', 'Parch', 'Fare', 'Sex_female', 'Sex_male', 'Embarked_C', 'Embarked_Q',
'Embarked_S']]
y = data['Survived']
# 4. Split Data
X_train, X_test, y_train, y_test = train_test_split(X, y, test_size=0.2, random_state=42)
# 5. Feature Scaling
scaler = StandardScaler()
X_train_scaled = scaler.fit_transform(X_train)
X_test_scaled = scaler.transform(X_test)
# 6. Train Model
model = LogisticRegression()
model.fit(X_train_scaled, y_train)
# 7. Evaluate Model
y_pred = model.predict(X_test_scaled)
accuracy = accuracy_score(y_test, y_pred)
print(f'Accuracy: {accuracy * 100:.2f}%')