Introduction to python

By:
Irandufa Indebu

[email protected]
 Outlines
Python Language overview

Machine Learning with python

 Overview of python language
Python is a high-level scripting language which can be used for a
wide variety of text processing, system administration and
internet-related tasks.

Python is a true object-oriented language, and is available on a

wide variety of platforms.

Python support dynamic data type

It is Independent from platforms

High-level internal object data types & Automatic memory

management
 Why python?
Python has become the lingua franca for many data science
applications.

Python is reach in libraries for data loading, visualization,

statistics, natural language processing, image processing, and more

This vast toolbox provides data scientists with a large array of

general- and special-purpose functionality.

One of the main advantages of using Python is the ability to

interact directly with the code, using a terminal or other tools like
the Jupyter Notebook, which we’ll look at shortly.
 Why python?
Machine learning and data analysis are fundamentally iterative
processes, in which the data drives the analysis.

It is essential for these processes to have tools that allow quick
iteration and easy interaction.

As a general-purpose programming language, Python also allows

for the creation of complex graphical user interfaces (GUIs) and
web services, and for integration into existing systems.
 Special Feature of python
Python statements do not need to end with a special character;

The python interpreter knows that you are done with an

individual statement by the presence of a newline, which will be
generated when you press the “Return” key of your keyboard.

Thus, Use a newline to end a line of code

Some statement such as if statement might not end with one line,
thus we have to use \ at the end of the line to tell the python the
line is continuing.
 Special Feature of python
Python uses indentation (that is, the amount of white space
before the statement itself) to indicate the presence of loops,
instead of using delimiters like curly braces ({}) or keywords (like
“begin” and “end”) as in many other languages

The amount of indentation you use is not important, but it must

be consistent within a given depth of a loop, and statements which
are not indented must begin in the first column.
 Variables in python?
Variables are nothing but reserved memory locating to store
value

This means when you create the variable, you reserve some space
in memory

Based on the data types of the variables, the interpreter allocates

memory and decides what can be stored the reserved memory.
 Assigning values to variables in python
In python, no type declarations, just assigned!

Variable types don’t need to be declared. Python figures out the

variable types on its own

Once a variable is assigned string, it only accepts values

with string type

So, you can’t just append an integer to a string. You must first
convert the integer to a string itself.
 Basic Data type in python
Data stored in memory can be of many types

Python has various standard data types that are used to define the
operation possible on them and the storage method for each of
them.

Python has 5 standard data types:

1. Numbers 4. Tuple

2. Strings 5. Dictionary

3. List
 Basic Data type in python

1. Numbers: Used to store numeric values

Types of numbers:

Python supports several different numeric types

A. Integers (default for numbers): Examples: 0, 1, 1234, -56

Note: dividing an integer by another integer will return only the

integer part of the quotient, e.g. z = 5 / 2 # Answer is 2, integer
division.
 Basic Data type in python
B. Floating point numbers Examples: 0., 1.0, 3.456, 1e10,
3.14e-2, 6.99E4

Division works normally for floating point numbers:

x = 7./2. = 3.5

Operations involving both floats and integers will yield floats:

y = 6.4 – 2 = 4.4
 Basic Data type in python: Operation on numbers
Basic algebraic operations arithmetic operations (like C/C++): a+b, a-
b, a*b, a/b, a%b

Exponentiation: a**b

Comparison operators: Greater than, less than, etc.: a < b, a > b, a <= b, a
>= b

Identity tests: a == b, a != b

To add or subtract: +=, -= etc… (no ++ or --) sum += x

 Basic Data type in python: Operation on numbers
Assignment using = (but it has different semantics!) a = 1 a = "foo" #
OK

You can also assign to multiple names at the same time.

 Basic Data type in python: Strings
2. Strings data types

Characters are strings of length 1

There is no char type like in C++ or Java

Strings are ordered blocks of text Strings are enclosed in single or

double quotation marks E.g.: 'abc', “abc” (they have the same meaning)

Use triple double-quotes for multiple line strings or strings that contain

both ‘ and “ inside of them:

 Basic operation on Strings

Concatenation and repetition

Strings are concatenated with the + sign

Strings are repeated with the * sign:

Methods

Len(‘string’) – returns the number of characters in the String

 Basic operation on Strings
Methods

str(Object) – returns a String representation of the Object

‘string’.upper() - string operations to perform some formatting

operations on strings:
 Basic Data type in python: Substrings

Python starts indexing at 0. A string s will have indexes running

from 0 to len(s)-1 (where len(s) is the length of s) in integer
quantities.

s[i] fetches the ith element in s

s[i:j] fetches elements i (inclusive) through j (not inclusive)

 Basic Data type in python: Substrings

s[:j] fetches all elements up to (not including) j

s[i:] fetches all elements from i onward, inclusive

 Basic Data type in python: Substrings

s[i:j:k] extracts every kth element starting with index i (inlcusive)

and ending with index j (not inclusive)
 Sequences
Sequence represents ordered set of objects indexed by
nonnegative integers
It includes strings, lists and tuples
Strings are sequences of characters
Lists and Tuple are sequences of arbitrary python object such as
numbers, strings, and/or nested sub lists
Lists are mutable and allow insertion, deletion and substitution
of elements.
– Strings and tuples are immutable
 Compound data types: Lists
Lists are ordered collection of data, contained in square brackets []
Lists in Python look and act a lot like arrays in other languages
Basically, it allows us to group a bunch of values under one variable
name

The values can be any python objects

Unlike arrays in many languages which all must be of the same type
 We can create a list by using square brackets and separating the values
with commas:
Numbers: L1 = [0,1,2,3]
Strings: L2 = ['zero', 'one']
Nested sublists: L3 =[0,1,[2,3],'three',['four,one']]
Nothing/empty: L4 = []
 Compound data types: Lists

Having a list of a bunch of values does us little good unless we

can access the individual elements of the list

We can access individual elements by their index

to print element at index 1

Lists are mutable: individual elements can be reassigned in

place. Moreover, they can grow and shrink in place
 Operations on Lists
Index and slice assignment:
Indexing: L1[i], L2[i][j]

Slicing: L3[i:j]

Concatenation:

Repetition:
 Built-in Functions on Lists

Sorting: sorts items of mylist in place

 Reversal: reverse items of l in place

 Shrinking:

 Appending:
 Built-in Functions on Lists

Nested List
Example:

Note: it is possible to use append, delete, update and reverse in

nested list, however impossible to use sort method.
 Tuples

Tuples are contained in parentheses ()

Tuples can contain
• Numbers: t1 = (0,1,2,3)
• Strings: t2 = ('zero', 'one‘)
• Nested sub-tuples: t3=(0,1,(2,3), 'two‘ ,(‘ six, one'))
• Nothing (Empty) : t4 = ()
As long as you're not nesting tuples, you can omit the
parentheses
• Example: t1 = 0,1,2,3 is the same as t1 = (0,1,2,3)
 Tuples are immutable: individual elements cannot be
reassigned in place.
 Operations on Tuples: basic operations
Tuple indexing works just like string and list indexing
Indexing: L1[i]
Concatenation: same with list
Repetition: same with list
Length: (this also works for lists and strings) len(t1)
Note: we cannot use append operation for tuples
To check whether the given element is within the tuple or not, use
elements to be checked followed by in followed by tuple name;
Example: >>t=(25, 20, “Hello”)
>>25 in t
Return True, Note: This can works for lists too (try it..).
 Dictionary

 Dictionaries consist of key-value pairs (an unordered set of

key/value pairs)

 A Dictionary consists of a name, followed by a key, which then

hold a certain amount of values

 A key is surrounded by square brackets ( [ ] ) while values are

surrounded by curly braces ( { } ).

 A dictionary works in a similar way to a real dictionary. You

can sort of think of a key as if it were a word, and then the value as
the definition of the word, or the value that the word holds.
 Dictionary

 A key can be almost any python data type, but are often
words or numbers, while the values held by a dictionary can
be anything.

 “dict” we declare each key and value separately.

 As you can see its very similar to a real dictionary, where we

essentially create a word and attach a value to it.

 Dictionaries can be contained in lists and vice versa.

 Dictionaries are unordered and mutable

 Dictionary

 The main difference between dictionary and list is: list is

ordered sequence, whereas dictionary is unordered sequence

 In addition, the main difference is that items in dictionaries are

accessed via keys and not via their position.

 The values of a dictionary can be any type of Python data

Output
 Dictionary

 In the above examples, Amharic words such as አምበሳ, ድመት,

ደፓርትመንት, ማስተማር …. Are called keys whereas their
corresponding definition in Afaan-Oromo is called Values.

 Note that, the Keys of a dictionary are unique

Unlike lists, which keep your objects arranged in the order in which
you inserted them, Python’s dictionary does not

This means you cannot assume that the rows in any dictionary are in
any particular order; for all intents and purposes, they are unordered.
 Dictionary

Remember: a key in the dictionary is used to look up a

value.

Thus, unlike lists, which use numeric index values to access

data, dictionaries use keys to access their associated data
values

 output
 Dictionary

 It is possible to add the elements to the dictionary

 However, whenever we add the new element, we have to add

it with the key/value format

 In this case we have to use the square bracket instead of curly

bracket.

 Example: amharic_oro_dict[ “አስተዳደር”]=“Bulchiinsa”

 This will add the አስተዳደር/Bulchiinsa to our previous dictionary

of amharic_oro_dict.
 Dictionary

 Generally, insertion order has no meaning in dictionary

 Like that of lists, it is possible to grow or shrink the dictionary

 Accessing data in a dictionary uses the square bracket

notation. Put a key inside square brackets to access its
associated value.

 Python’s for loop can be used to iterate over a dictionary. On

each iteration, the key is assigned to the loop variable, which
is used to access the data value.
 Python Operator
Arithmetic operators

For arithmetic operations the usual symbols are used (such as +, -

, *, /, %).
 Special use of + for string concatenation.
 Special use of % for string, integer and float formatting
 Logical operators
 For Logical comparison the following words are used (such as
and, or, not)
 Impossible to use symbols such a (&&, ||, !) like in Java
 Python Operator

Assignment operators

Assignment operators is = (e.g. x=8)

Comparison uses ==if x == 8: sum += x

 Naming rules in Python
Names are case sensitive and cannot start with a number.

They can contain letters, numbers, and underscores.

bob Bob _bob _2_bob_ bob_2 BoB

There are some reserved words:

and, assert, break, class, continue, def, del, elif, else, except, exec,
finally, for, from, global, if, import, in, is, lambda, not, or, pass,
print, raise, return, try, while, range …

The basic output printing command is “print.”

Basic input command: raw_input() for python2, for python3 input()

 Output in Python: The print Statement

You can print a string to the screen using print

Elements separated by commas print with a space between them

Elements separated by commas print with a space between them

“Print” automatically adds a newline to the end of the string. If

you include a list of strings, it will concatenate them with a space
between them
 How to take input from the user

We use raw_input for python version 2 and input for python v.3

The input(string) method returns a line of user input as a

string

The parameter is used as a prompt

Exercise;

write a program to ask the user for an integer, and then print
out whether that number is EVEN or ODD

Solution?
 Basic Statements: The If Statement

# inside a script
if condition:
action
Notes: No Braces???
blocks delimited by indentation! Python uses indentation instead
of braces to determine the scope of expressions

All lines must be indented the same amount to be part of the

scope (or indented more if part of an inner scope). This forces
the programmer to use proper indentation since the indenting is
part of the program!
 Basic Statements: The If Statement

A statement typed into an interpreter ends once an empty

line is entered, and a statement in a script ends once an
unindented line appears. The same is true for defining
functions

colon (:) used at end of lines containing control flow keywords

(such as if, elif, else, while, …)
 Basic Statements: The If Statement

The following asks Students for their grade.

The indented block will only be executed if the grade is “A". If the
Students enters another grade, nothing happens.

In the above program, we used or operation to enable our

program to accept student grade in small letter or capital letter.
 Basic Statements: The if/else Statement
In the if/else statement, we have two condition: the if part and the
else part
The else part is returned if the if part is failed (false)
Syntax: if condition: Example
statement 1
else:
statement 2
Here, the poor is returned if the student entered grade
other than “A” or “a” letter.
Note: both if and else should be in the same position
(indentation)
 Basic Statements: if/elif/else Statement

If statements can be combined with else if (elif) and else statements

as follows:

if condition1:
action1
elif condition2:
action2
else:
action3

Note: if we have more condition, we use elif in python ,

not else if like in java or c++
 Basic Statements: Combining If Statement
 Conditions in if statements may be combined using and & or
statements
if condition1 and condition2:action1 # if both
condition1 and condition2 are true, execute action1

if condition1 or condition2: action2 # if either

condition1 or condition2 is true, execute action2
Conditions may be expressed using the following operations:
<, <=, >, >=, ==, !=, in
 Basic Statements: The While Statement
 While statements have the following basic structure:
# inside a script
while condition:
action
 As long as the condition is true, the while statement will
execute the action
 While statements are intended to be used with changing
conditions.

 If the condition in a while statement does not change, the

program will be stuck in an infinite loop until the user hits ctrl-
C.
 Basic Statements: The While Statement
 inserting elements (items) to list using while loop:

 output

This snip-set code insert the elements automatically to the empty

list we created.
Output will be: [0, 1, 2, 3, 4]
Note: 5 will not be included since we are using greater operator.
While it the i value reach 5, the iteration exit.
 Basic Statements: The For Statement
 For statements have the following basic structure:
for item i in set s:
action on item i
Example: for i in range(1,7):
print (i, i**2, i**3, i**4)
 Basic Statements: The For Statement
The item i is often used to refer to an index in a list, tuple, or
array
 Example:
L = [0,1,2,3] # or, equivalently, range(4)
for i in range(len(L)):
L[i] = L[i]**2
print L

The value of L is updated to L = [0,1,4,9]

 Of course, we could accomplish this particular task more compactly
using arrays:
>>> L = range(4)
>>> L = L**2
>>> L[0,1,4,9,]
Basic Statements: Loop Control Statements
 Basic Statements: Break Statement

Break statement is used to come out of loop like for, while.

Example:
i=0 Output
while (i<10):
i+=1
print(i)
if (i==5):
break
print(“Loop exited”)

Remember: It is possible to use break statement with

other statements such as for loop, if statements even
with function
 Basic Statements: continue Statement
‘Continue’ statement skips the current iteration of loops like for, while.
Example output

 Remember: It is possible to use continue statement

with other statements such as for loop, if
statements even with function
 Function in Python

Functions are objects and treated like any other variable in

python, the def statement simply assigns a function to a variable
Usually, function definitions have the following basic structure:

def funcName(parameter_list):
return values //function body
The parameter list consists of none or more parameters.

Parameters are called arguments, if the function is called. The function

body consists of indented statements
The function body gets executed every time the function is called.
 Function in Python

Example:

Function body

Here, we called the function

using its name and we
passed the arguments

Here, we created the

function with no argument
 Function variables

 The variable that is declared inside the function is called local

variable
It is impossible to use local variable outside the function
These local variable is executed if only their function is called
The variable that is created outside the function is called global
variable
We may use global variable inside the function but the reverse is
not true
x=10 # here x is global variable def myfunc():
def myfunc(): x=10 #local variable
#function body print(x)
 Function in Python

 Example: write the program that calculate your body mass

index (BMS) using function
Solution ?
 The range() Function

The built-in function range() is the right function to iterate over a sequence of
numbers

It generates an iterator of arithmetic progressions: Example

range(5) output= range(0, 5)

We can use it in a for loop and you will see what is meant by this:

This program will print out the number from 0 to 4

range(n) generates an iterator to progress the integer numbers starting with 0

and ending with (n -1).
 The range() Function

range() can also be called with two arguments:

range(begin, end)

The above call produces the list iterator of numbers starting with begin
(inclusive) and ending with one less than the number end .

Example: print(range(4, 10))

The output of this program is list of number from 4 to 10

including 4 but excluding 10.
 The range() Function

So far the increment of range() has been 1.

We can specify a different increment with a third argument

The increment is called the step . It can be both negative and positive,
but not zero: Syntax: range(begin, end, step)

Example: print(range(4, 50, 5))

Output= 4, 9, 14, 19, 24, 29, 34, 39, 44, 49

Note: It can be done backwards as well:

 File Handling in python

Computer file is a chunk of logically related data or

information which can be used by computer programs.

Usually a file is kept on a permanent storage media, e.g. a

hard drive disk…

unique name and path is used by human users or in

programs or scripts to access a file for reading and
modification purposes.
 Files: Input & Output

input = open(‘data’, ‘r’) Open the file for input

S = input.read() Read whole file into one String
S = input.read(N) Reads N bytes (N >= 1)
L = input.readline() Returns a list of line strings
input.close() Close opened file for reading

output = open(‘data’, ‘w’) Open the file for writing

output.write(S) Writes the string S to file
output.writeline(L) Writes each of the lines in list L to
file
output.close() Close opened file for writing
 Reading and writing a file in python
The syntax for reading and writing files in Python is similar to programming
languages like C, C++, Java, Perl, and others but a lot easier to handle.

We will start with writing a file.

Note: whenever we write a file, we have to use triple quato in our python
IDLE

From the above code, if you see in your folder, it create the text file with the
name myfile having the above contents.
 Reading and writing a file in python
For other language such as Amharic letter, unless we format the
encoding, python will not write to the file.

Thus, we have to use encoding value to utf-8 which is common for

such language scripting. See the following example:

If we didn't use encoding, python interpreter cause error for this code.
 Reading and writing a file in python
Now, we want to see how to read this file from Python.
We can read the whole text file into one string, as you can see in the
following code
text=open(“myfile.txt”).read()
Note: if our code and our file is in different place, we have to
use the full path of our file location.
 If you call print(text) , you will see the text from above again in
python console.
Reading in a text file in one string object is okay, as long as the
file is not too large
If a file is large, we can read in the file line by line

See the next code ….

 Reading and writing a file in python

Some people don't use the with statement to read or write

files. This is not a good idea. The code above without with
looks like this:

Both achieve same task, however, they are different.

With the second code, we used close, however if we use
with we don’t need to close the file.
 Reading and writing a file in python
Thus, with our first code, the file will be closed
automatically, when the with blocks ends.
Therefore, better to use with to open the file
 Possible to use loops with file
while loop expression for file reading:
f = open(filename, "r")
line = f.readline()
while line: # do something with line
print line
line = f.readline()
f.close()
open() and file()are identical:
f = open(filename, "r")
f = file(filename, "r")

Instead of using while loop to iterate through file, more

concisely one can write with for loop:
for line in file(filename, "r“):
print line
 Python modules
Module is a file, which contains definitions. We can define classes,
modules, variables etc., in module file and reuse them in other python
scripts.
 Importing modules
Import to access other codes
Such as: import sys, import string, import math, import
random
Math functions: Many math functions in the math module
>>> import math
>>> dir(math)
['__doc__', '__file__', '__name__', 'acos', 'asin', 'atan', 'atan2',
'ceil', 'cos', 'cosh', 'degrees', 'e', 'exp', 'fabs', 'floor', 'fmod',
'frexp', 'hypot', 'ldexp', 'log', 'log10', 'modf', 'pi', 'pow',
'radians', 'sin', 'sinh', 'sqrt', 'tan', 'tanh']
>>>
 Importing modules
As program gets longer, need to organize them for easier access and
easier maintenance.
Reuse same functions across programs without copying its
definition into each program

Python allows putting definitions in a file

use them in a script or in an interactive instance of the interpreter

Such a file is called a module

definitions from a module can be imported into other modules or

into the main module
 Modules
Reusing code is key to building a maintainable system.
And when it comes to reusing code in Python, it all starts and

ends with the humble function and module

Take a collection of functions and package them as a file, and

you’ve got a module (which can also be reused).
A module is a file containing Python definitions and statements.
The file name is the module name with the suffix .py appended.
Within a module, the module’s name is available in the global
variable __name__.
How to Import modules?
 Python: classes and objects

Class is a blue print to create objects.

Syntax
class ClassName :
< statement- 1 >
.
.
< statement- N>
‘class’ keyword is used to define a class
You can instantiate any number of objects from a class
See the syntax from next slide …
 Python: classes and objects
objName = new ClassName(arguments). See this Example
 Python: classes and objects

In the above code, we created the Class called Employee

Under the Employee line, we created two function: one in
which we define the attribute of the class, and the other where
we instantiated the class.
Lastly we created different objects such as emp1, emp2,
emp3… from the class by passing the argument as the
constructor.
Whenever we create the object, the created object will take
the behavior of its parent or its Class.
 Python: classes and objects
__init__(arguments)

__init__ is a special function called constructor used to

initialize objects.

In Employee class, __init__ method is used to initialize id,

firstName, lastName to an object at the time of creation.

Nb. Use double underscore to write init function.

_init_ and __init__ are different

Use the second one.

 Python: classes and objects
Instance variables

Instance variables have values unique to an object. Usually these

are defined in __init__ method

The previous Employee class has 3 instance variables id,

firstName, lastName

Note: The first parameter of any method in a class must be self

This parameter is required even if the function does not use it.
‘self’ is used to refer current object.
 Python: classes and objects
Instance variables VS Class variable

Class variables are associated with class and available to all the
instances (objects) of the class

where as instance variables are unique to objects, used to

uniquely identify the object

Here, Organization is Class variable which can be accessed by all

objects
 Python libraries
Python provides its large library support for various stages in data
science

Python libraries contain various tools, functions, and methods to

analyze data.

Each library has its focus on data mining, data visualization, etc.

Data processing and Machine Data visualization Libraries:

Leaning Libraries: • Matplotlib

• NumPy • Seaborn
• Pandas
• Pydot
• SciPy
• Scikit-learn • Plotly
 Python libraries for machine learning
1. NumPy

NumPy is the fundamental package for machine learning with

Python

numpy is an acronym for Numerical Python.

NumPy is a very popular python library for large multi-

dimensional array and matrix processing, with the help of a
large collection of high-level mathematical functions.

It is very useful for fundamental scientific computations in

Machine Learning
 Python libraries for machine learning
It offers powerful tools including the following:
 The N-dimensional array ndarray class and several subclasses
representing matrices and arrays

 Various sophisticated array functions

 Useful linear algebra capabilities

How To import numpy ?

 Python libraries for machine learning
2. Pandas
Pandas is a free Python data analysis and data handling software
library.

Pandas provides a variety of high-performance and convenient data

structures along with operations for data manipulation.

The standard form to import the pandas module is:

Note: pd is just an alias. Any name can be used as an alias.

 Python libraries for machine learning
Load and examine the dataset:

DataFrame is a two-dimensional array where each feature (column) is

simply a shared index series.

A DataFrame can be viewed as a generalization of the NumPy array.

A dataset can be read and loaded to the pandas DataFrame using the
below code syntax:

The first glance at the dataset can be made using the following
functions:
 Python libraries for machine learning
i. head() – This built-in function displays the first five rows by default. Passing
any integer in the function will display that many certain rows starting from the
top.

ii. tail() – This built-in function displays the last five rows by default. Passing any
integer in the function will display that many certain rows from the bottom.

iii. sample() – This built-in function displays a random row from the dataset.
Passing any integer in the function will display that many random rows.

iv. info() – This built-in function displays a complete summary of the dataset,
including the no. of rows, columns, the data types of the features, the null values

v. describe() – This built-in function displays comprehensive statistics that sums

up the central tendency, the shape of the dataset, and dispersion
Thank
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