Python 1: Core Data Analysis

Description

During this hands-on course, participants will gain the skills needed to develop Python programs to solve typical Finance problems, cutting through the noise of generic “Data Science” courses. Participants will be introduced to best-practices programming in Python to clean, analyze, and visualize financial data.

Prerequisites

A general understanding of programming principles is recommended but not required. Participants should also understand finance concepts but in-depth analytical understanding is not necessary. Participants are expected to download & install Anaconda or an equivalent Python distribution in advance of the course.

Time

8 hours

Learning Topics

Using Python

Developing familiarity with the Anaconda Python Distribution
Managing environments and Installing packages
Gain familiarity with open source Python Development
Learn how to write programs in Python and developing an understanding for data structures, functions, loops, logical operations and other programming best practices

Data Collection, Cleaning, Manipulation and Visualization

Import data from various sources (CSV, JSON, Excel) into pandas (a high-performance library of data structures)
Develop the necessary skills to clean raw financial data, and gain familiarity in overcoming common issues with numerical data
Merge data from various sources and leverage builtin functionality to gain efficiency
Build programs to perform exploratory data analysis using basic statistical functions
Develop the ability to create powerful visualizations using the pandas plotting functions