ChrisThe method re.compile(pattern) returns a regular expression object from the pattern that provides basic regex methods such as pattern.search(string), pattern.match(string), and pattern.findall(string). The explicit two-step approach of (1) compiling and (2) searching the pattern is more efficient than calling, say, search(pattern, string) at once, if you match the same pattern multiple times because it avoids … Read more
Want to calculate the variance of a column in your Pandas DataFrame? In case you’ve attended your last statistics course a few years ago, let’s quickly recap the definition of variance: it’s the average squared deviation of the list elements from the average value. You can calculate the variance of a Pandas DataFrame by using … Read more
Question: Is it possible to call a function inside a list comprehension statement? Background: List comprehension is a compact way of creating lists. The simple formula is [expression + context]. Expression: What to do with each list element? Context: What elements to select? The context consists of an arbitrary number of for and if statements. … Read more
In many Python regex functions, you see a third argument flags. What are they and how do they work? Flags allow you to control the regular expression engine. Because regular expressions are so powerful, they are a useful way of switching on and off certain features (e.g. whether to ignore capitalization when matching your regex). … Read more
Do you encounter this stupid error? You’re not alone—thousands of coders like you generate this error in thousands of projects every single month. This short tutorial will show you exactly why this error occurs, how to fix it, and how to never make the same mistake again. So, let’s get started! Python throws the TypeError … Read more
A recent study from O’Reilly found that data science is a wide field with many specializations and job descriptions. However, the average earning of an employed data scientist—45% of all respondents would consider themselves as such—is between $60,000 and $110,000. This means that experienced data scientists over time quite certainly reach six-figure income levels if … Read more
Two mega trends can be observed in the 21st century: (I) the proliferation of data—and (II) the reorganization of the biggest market in the world: the global labor market towards project-based freelancing work. By positioning yourself as a freelance data scientist, you’ll not only work in an exciting area with massive growth opportunities but you’ll … Read more
Do you want to enrich your Python script with powerful text-generation capabilities? You’re in the right place! What does it do? I just discovered DeepAI’s API that automatically generates a body of text, given a sentence fragment or topic keyword. How can it be used? You can use this as a basis to generate text … Read more
This tutorial provides you a quick and dirty introduction to the most important Pandas features. A popular quickstart to the Pandas library is provided by the official “10 Minutes to Pandas” guide. This tutorial in front of you aims to cover the most important 80% of the official guide, but in 50% of the time. … Read more
Rapid Answer: The following one-liner calculates the MD5 from the string ‘hello world’: Background: MD5 message-digest is a vulnerable cryptographic algorithm to map a string to a 128-bit hash value. You can use it as a checksum on a given text to ensure that the message hasn’t been corrupted. However, you shouldn’t use it as … Read more
Do you use the awesome WordPress plugin “Enlighter” to embed code in your WordPress site like this? If you’re like me, you want to be able to customize the style (such as font size) globally—not locally for each individual code snippet. Problem: How to increase the font size of the Enlighter WordPress plugin? To increase … Read more
Pandas is Excel on steroids—the powerful Python library allows you to analyze structured and tabular data with surprising efficiency and ease. Pandas is one of the reasons why master coders reach 100x the efficiency of average coders. In today’s article, you’ll learn how to work with missing data—in particular, how to handle NaN values in … Read more