Installing Anaconda

The first thing we need to do is set up our Python environment such that rest of the libraries will be easily accessible through Python. Anaconda is a popular data science platform with a Python interface and is available here: https://www.anaconda.com/. It has conda as a package manager, which can install, delete, and manage versions of Python libraries while keeping it isolated from other Python environments. In this book, we will use conda from Anaconda. Let's go ahead and set this up. 

First, download and install Anaconda:

• On Linux:

wget https://repo.continuum.io/archive/Anaconda3-5.0.1-Linux-x86_64.sh
bash Anaconda3-5.0.1-MacOSX-x86_64.sh

• On macOS, wget is not directly available; use brew to install wget:

wget https://repo.continuum.io/archive/Anaconda3-5.0.1-MacOSX-x86_64.sh
bash Anaconda3-5.0.1-MacOSX-x86_64.sh

This will install the Python libraries in the folder $HOME/anaconda3, since we are using Python 3. A Python 2 version is also available and the installation process is similar. To use Anaconda, the newly installed libraries need to be added in $PATH, this can be done every time a new shell is launched by running: 

export PATH="$PATH_TO_ANACONDA3/anaconda3/bin:$PATH" 

$PATH_TO_ANACONDA3 is the location path to the Anaconda3 folder. For more convenience, add this to .bashrc or .bash_profile depending on if you are using Linux or macOS respectively. 

Once conda is installed, many other scientific packages will also be installed. Some of these packages are: