"Surveys the Earth's biodiversity, its origins and some of the threats it currently faces ... then asks how biodiversity loss will affect the human race."--P. [4] of cover

How much do we really know about the species that make up the natural world? All over the world, biodiversity is gravely threatened – by overfishing, habitat destruction, pollution and climate change. Yet life on Earth has previously experienced five episodes of mass extinction, and nature has repeatedly proved itself to be a resilient, regenerative force. In this fascinating book, ecologist Dr. Ken Thompson surveys the Earth's biodiversity, its origins and some of the threats it currently faces. Thought-provoking and deeply engaging, Do We Need Pandas? offers a non-technical overview of our ecosystems and expands on the causes and consequences of biodiversity loss. Importantly, it also examines what we should be doing to secure the survival not only of the species with which we share the planet, but of ourselves – and whether we need to be more concerned about ecosystems as a whole than about iconic species such as the orangutan and giant Panda.

Understand and implement big data analysis solutions in pandas with an emphasis on performance. This book strengthens your intuition for working with pandas, the Python data analysis library, by exploring its underlying implementation and data structures. Thinking in Pandas introduces the topic of big data and demonstrates concepts by looking at exciting and impactful projects that pandas helped to solve. From there, you will learn to assess your own projects by size and type to see if pandas is the appropriate library for your needs. Author Hannah Stepanek explains how to load and normalize data in pandas efficiently, and reviews some of the most commonly used loaders and several of their most powerful options. You will then learn how to access and transform data efficiently, what methods to avoid, and when to employ more advanced performance techniques. You will also go over basic data access and munging in pandas and the intuitive dictionary syntax. Choosing the right DataFrame format, working with multi-level DataFrames, and how pandas might be improved upon in the future are also covered. By the end of the book, you will have a solid understanding of how the pandas library works under the hood. Get ready to make confident decisions in your own projects by utilizing pandas—the right way. What You Will Learn Understand the underlying data structure of pandas and why it performs the way it does under certain circumstancesDiscover how to use pandas to extract, transform, and load data correctly with an emphasis on performanceChoose the right DataFrame so that the data analysis is simple and efficient.Improve performance of pandas operations with other Python libraries Who This Book Is ForSoftware engineers with basic programming skills in Python keen on using pandas for a big data analysis project. Python software developers interested in big data.

Over 95 hands-on recipes to leverage the power of pandas for efficient scientific computation and data analysis About This Book Use the power of pandas to solve most complex scientific computing problems with ease Leverage fast, robust data structures in pandas to gain useful insights from your data Practical, easy to implement recipes for quick solutions to common problems in data using pandas Who This Book Is For This book is for data scientists, analysts and Python developers who wish to explore data analysis and scientific computing in a practical, hands-on manner. The recipes included in this book are suitable for both novice and advanced users, and contain helpful tips, tricks and caveats wherever necessary. Some understanding of pandas will be helpful, but not mandatory. What You Will Learn Master the fundamentals of pandas to quickly begin exploring any dataset Isolate any subset of data by properly selecting and querying the data Split data into independent groups before applying aggregations and transformations to each group Restructure data into tidy form to make data analysis and visualization easier Prepare real-world messy datasets for machine learning Combine and merge data from different sources through pandas SQL-like operations Utilize pandas unparalleled time series functionality Create beautiful and insightful visualizations through pandas direct hooks to Matplotlib and Seaborn In Detail This book will provide you with unique, idiomatic, and fun recipes for both fundamental and advanced data manipulation tasks with pandas. Some recipes focus on achieving a deeper understanding of basic principles, or comparing and contrasting two similar operations. Other recipes will dive deep into a particular dataset, uncovering new and unexpected insights along the way. The pandas library is massive, and it's common for frequent users to be unaware of many of its more impressive features. The official pandas documentation, while thorough, does not contain many useful examples of how to piece together multiple commands like one would do during an actual analysis. This book guides you, as if you were looking over the shoulder of an expert, through practical situations that you are highly likely to encounter. Many advanced recipes combine several different features across the pandas library to generate results. Style and approach The author relies on his vast experience teaching pandas in a professional setting to deliver very detailed explanations for each line of code in all of the recipes. All code and dataset explanations exist in Jupyter Notebooks, an excellent interface for exploring data.

Get complete instructions for manipulating, processing, cleaning, and crunching datasets in Python. Updated for Python 3.6, the second edition of this hands-on guide is packed with practical case studies that show you how to solve a broad set of data analysis problems effectively. You’ll learn the latest versions of pandas, NumPy, IPython, and Jupyter in the process. Written by Wes McKinney, the creator of the Python pandas project, this book is a practical, modern introduction to data science tools in Python. It’s ideal for analysts new to Python and for Python programmers new to data science and scientific computing. Data files and related material are available on GitHub. Use the IPython shell and Jupyter notebook for exploratory computing Learn basic and advanced features in NumPy (Numerical Python) Get started with data analysis tools in the pandas library Use flexible tools to load, clean, transform, merge, and reshape data Create informative visualizations with matplotlib Apply the pandas groupby facility to slice, dice, and summarize datasets Analyze and manipulate regular and irregular time series data Learn how to solve real-world data analysis problems with thorough, detailed examples

"How much do we really know about the species that make up the natural world? In this fascinating book Ken Thompson explains what we do and don't understand about biodiversity. We know that most species remain undiscovered, and that biodiversity is gravely threatened--by overfishing, habitat loss, pollution and climate change. Life on Earth has previously experienced five episodes of mass extinction, and we are now in the middle of a sixth. Do We Need Pandas? surveys the Earth's biodiversity, its origins and some of the threats it currently faces. It then asks how biodiversity loss will affect the human race. Will we even notice, and if we do, what will we notice? It asks what we should be doing to secure the survival not only of the species with which we share the planet, but of ourselves--and whether we need to be more concerned about ecosystems as a whole than about iconic species."--Page 4 of cover.

This ebook includes audio narration. The author and illustrator team behind the classic Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see? turn their extraordinary talents to the theme of animal conservation. Thirty-five years after their first groundbreaking collaboration, the creators of Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? and Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear? reunite to address the important topic of animal conservation. A Bald Eagle soars, a Spider Monkey swings, a Macaroni Penguin struts, and a Red Wolf sneaks through Bill Martin Jr's rhythmic text and Eric Carle's vibrant images, and all are watched over by our best hope for the future-a dreaming child. Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What Do You See? is a 2004 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year. Narrated by Gwyneth Paltrow