Anaconda

The examples in this book require the use of the Python programming language. There are many distributions of Python available. Anaconda is a free, open source Python distribution designed specifically for machine learning. It includes Python and over 1,000 data science Python libraries (for example, NumPy, scikit-learn, pandas) that can be used on top of the base Python language. It also includes Jupyter notebook, an interactive Python console that we will use extensively in this book. Additional tools that come with Anaconda include the Spyder IDE (short for interactive development environment) and RStudio.

Anaconda can be downloaded from https://www.continuum.io/downloads.

To download the Anaconda distribution of Python, complete the following steps:

1. Navigate to the preceding website.
2. Choose the appropriate Python download depending on your operating system and desired Python version. For this book, we used Anaconda 5.2.0 (the 64-bit installation for Windows, which includes Python 3.6):

3. Click Download. Your browser will begin to download the file. Once it is finished, click on the file in your web browser or in your OS file manager.

4. A window will appear (shown in the following screenshot). Click on the Next> button:

5. Continue to follow the prompts, which include accepting the license agreement, choosing the users for the installation, selecting the file destination, and choosing various options.
6. Anaconda will begin to install. Due to the number of packages included in the installation, this may take a while.
7. After the installation is complete, close the Anaconda window.