Python or R for Data Analysis: Which Should You Learn?
February 4, 2025
Article · 5 min read
This course is part of Applied Data Science with Python Specialization
Instructor: Christopher Brooks
820,167 already enrolled
Included with
(27,147 reviews)
(27,147 reviews)
Understand techniques such as lambdas and manipulating csv files
Describe common Python functionality and features used for data science
Query DataFrame structures for cleaning and processing
Explain distributions, sampling, and t-tests
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This course will introduce the learner to the basics of the python programming environment, including fundamental python programming techniques such as lambdas, reading and manipulating csv files, and the numpy library. The course will introduce data manipulation and cleaning techniques using the popular python pandas data science library and introduce the abstraction of the Series and DataFrame as the central data structures for data analysis, along with tutorials on how to use functions such as groupby, merge, and pivot tables effectively. By the end of this course, students will be able to take tabular data, clean it, manipulate it, and run basic inferential statistical analyses.
This course should be taken before any of the other Applied Data Science with Python courses: Applied Plotting, Charting & Data Representation in Python, Applied Machine Learning in Python, Applied Text Mining in Python, Applied Social Network Analysis in Python.
In this week you'll get an introduction to the field of data science, review common Python functionality and features which data scientists use, and be introduced to the Coursera Jupyter Notebook for the lectures. All of the course information on grading, prerequisites, and expectations are on the course syllabus, and you can find more information about the Jupyter Notebooks on our Course Resources page.
12 videos6 readings1 assignment1 programming assignment2 ungraded labs1 plugin
In this week of the course you'll learn the fundamentals of one of the most important toolkits Python has for data cleaning and processing -- pandas. You'll learn how to read in data into DataFrame structures, how to query these structures, and the details about such structures are indexed.
9 videos1 reading1 assignment1 programming assignment1 ungraded lab
In this week you'll deepen your understanding of the python pandas library by learning how to merge DataFrames, generate summary tables, group data into logical pieces, and manipulate dates. We'll also refresh your understanding of scales of data, and discuss issues with creating metrics for analysis. The week ends with a more significant programming assignment.
6 videos1 reading1 assignment1 programming assignment1 ungraded lab
In this week of the course you'll be introduced to a variety of statistical techniques such a distributions, sampling and t-tests. The week ends with two discussions of science and the rise of the fourth paradigm -- data driven discovery.
2 videos6 readings1 assignment1 programming assignment1 ungraded lab
We asked all learners to give feedback on our instructors based on the quality of their teaching style.
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Degree · 1 – 3 years
27,147 reviews
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Reviewed on Jul 26, 2020
Quizzes were very challenging and interesting. I learned alot. The main drawback in this course is that the materials are insufficient to answer the assignments.And some questions were not so clear.
Reviewed on Oct 4, 2018
Excellent excellent course! The instructor explains very well and video lectures are typically 5-10min only- very good bite-sites! Assignments are well-designed and you are working with real data!
Reviewed on Aug 24, 2017
The course is good but the oral explanations are at times very tiresome. A more constructive approach in which the explanations are followed by step-by-step examples whould be far better.Best regards
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