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Looking for good suggestions to learn Python and R

SeanAdams
17 - Castor
17 - Castor
Hi all,
Do any of you have good learning resources that you can recommend for learning R and Python. Probably want to tackle R first but open to being convinced the other way too.

Any online courses that you can recommend that not only make you read the manual but rather that progressively introduce concepts and then let you learn and practice with feedback.

Thanks all
Sean
6 REPLIES 6
JohnJPS
15 - Aurora
My formal training is miniscule. The Johns Hopkins series at Coursera is good, but that's the extent of my R training so I can't compare it to others. I've no training on Python at all, either, so I'm not much use for learning resources. I tend to think algorithmically and not syntactically... so courses focusing on concepts get me going more: "Learning from Data" (EdX) or "Machine Learning" (Coursera) are both great and use neither R nor Python. ISLR by Stanford might be the best in terms of your requirements, though: forcing you to work at it a bit, and actually, is R-based... it has a great PDF book which you can simply downliad and read at your own pace.

On Python... Despite no training on Python, (not even a MOOC), I highly recommend having a look. I've gotten things like XGB running back when it first appeared and was only available on Python, and GPU-enabled deep learning, which still can't even be done in R. Python Jupyter notebooks are pretty cool too. So, watch out for Python... it's being used for cutting edge stuff, and may even be overtaking the rest: http://r4stats.com/2017/02/28/r-passes-sas/
Bob_Blackey
11 - Bolide

Hi Sean,

 

@JohnJPS makes some good suggestions and I'll throw in some handy web resouces.

 

www.kdnuggets.com is a great resource with links to MOOCs, free books, articles, webinars, the works.

 

www.datasciencecentral.com as it has a lot of information too.

 

As John said the best courses combine learning the language with real world use cases.

 

R is handy especially because of the R tool in Alteryx, but like John my sense is that Python has more steam. I find it an easier language to use between the two and it has a amazingly strong user community. Looking at Dice.com I saw 1100 listings when searching for R and 6000 when searching for Python.

 

The Jupyter notebooks are very friendly and can be used with either language. Rstudio is good if you want the R route.

 

Cheers,
Bob

 

 

PeterGoldey
11 - Bolide

I'll second all the info already provided.

 

But if you're really starting from scratch, you could try this which is used as pre-work for some data science programs as an intro to Python.  Its quick on each topic and very focused.  You can run through the free HTML version exercise by exercise.

 

http://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/

SeanAdams
17 - Castor
17 - Castor

Thank you all for your ideas - lots to work with here!

 

Rohit_Bajaj
9 - Comet
Hi Sean,

In addition to previous suggestions, for Python you might like to try the android app - Sololearn Python as well.
I have found Sololearn apps very helpful in learning basics. It includes virtual environment to test code snippets along with various checkpoints to test what we have learned.

Thanks,
Rohit Bajaj
simon
11 - Bolide

I second Sololearn for python (and other languages). It's free. I did it on my phone whenever I had moment. The lessons get progressively harder and quizzes are challenging but I learned a lot. I would start with py first then R. Also, there are R libraries that you can leverage in python once you get up to speed on py.

 

If you have $1200-$1500 to spend, Udacity also has a Data Analyst nanodegree program which includes R, python, SQL and Tableau. 

https://www.udacity.com/course/data-analyst-nanodegree--nd002

 

good luck!

 

Simon

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