Python and R for the Modern Data Scientist: The Best of Both Worlds Paperback – 31 Aug. 2021

This is a fantastic book that clearly demonstrates the nuts and bolts of becoming bilingual in R and Python.Having used R for many years, I have been trying to get into Python and have really struggled to develop beyond the very basics. There are many entry points for Python, which can be confusing for someone who is ready to begin using modules and creating virtual environments (what are they anyway? This book will tell you!); a good text that describes the steps to get set up has been elusive until now.This book provides easy-to-follow explanations for setting up Python and getting started with data import and analysis. It compares functionality with R and describes the similarities and differences.There is a chapter describing R for Pythonistas, and a Python chapter for useRs. Subsequent chapters demonstrate how these two languages can work together for aspiring PythonistaRs.I can now see the advantages of Python and why it has become so popular in the data science community.Worth every penny.

As someone with an academia background, my first programming language was R, as is commonplace. R is fantastic for analysis and creating visualisations, but I quickly realised the de facto industry language for data scientist roles is Python. I therefore embarked on learning Python and was pleasantly surprised to see O’Reilly had a book specifically for this purpose.Unfortunately, whilst the book had the exact scope I was looking for, it’s executed at a very light level, it’s very short at 165 pages before the index (especially considering it’s price), and it doesn’t provide nearly enough depth to help with transitioning from one language to another. I honestly felt a little scammed by the time I finished this book. This is unfortunate as some O’reilly books are all-encompassing, fantastic resources where you can tell the author has sunk a career’s worth of work within. With this book I get the impression the authors wanted to quickly fill the gap in the market and provided the minimum amount of content to justify a book with the O’Reilly name.To the authors R. Scavettta and B. Angelov, you could have done much more with this.

My granddaughter says this book was and is a great help to her in college. They don't have textbooks anymore and the teachers just lecture. Don't know how you expect anyone to learn without notes of some kind to study.

Complete waste of paper.

The authors added here a ton of unnecessary jokes. The book is already pretty thin. Now, a half of the sentences are about jokes, while the explanations themselves are poor. They just throw a sentence into you like “never do this!” without a clear answer why. not worth this money.