Friday, January 15, 2016

A Gentle Introduction to Scikit-Learn

"A Gentle Introduction to Scikit-Learn: Scikit-learn provides a range of supervised and unsupervised learning algorithms via a consistent interface in Python. It is licensed under a permissive simplified BSD license and is distributed under many Linux distributions, encouraging academic and commercial use. The library is built upon the SciPy (Scientific Python) that must be installed before you can use scikit-learn. This stack that includes: NumPy: Base n-dimensional array package SciPy: Fundamental library for scientific computing Matplotlib: Comprehensive 2D/3D plotting IPython: Enhanced interactive console Sympy: Symbolic mathematics Pandas: Data structures and analysis Extensions or modules for SciPy care conventionally named SciKits. As such, the module provides learning algorithms and is named scikit-learn. The vision for the library is a level of robustness and support required for use in production systems. This means a deep focus on concerns such as easy of use, code quality, collaboration, documentation  and performance. Although the interface is Python, c-libraries are leverage for performance such as numpy for arrays and matrix operations, LAPACK, LibSVM and the careful use of cython."