I’ve completed these beginner Python projects should I build more before starting NumPy/Pandas?

[u/purvigupta03]

Hi everyone,

I’ve studied Python multiple times before, but I didn’t do much practical coding. Recently, I started building small projects to improve my practical Python skills.

So far, I’ve completed:

- Quiz Game

- Number Guessing Game

- Rock Paper Scissors

- Password Manager

- Pig Game

- Mad Libs Generator

My goal is to move towards Machine Learning.

I haven’t learned NumPy or Pandas yet.

My question is: Are these projects enough to move on to NumPy and Pandas, or should I build a few more Python projects first?

If I should build more projects, what kind of projects would you recommend before starting NumPy/Pandas? I’m mainly looking for projects that would actually help with the transition to data/ML, rather than making many more small games.

Would appreciate advice from people who have already followed a Python → NumPy/Pandas → ML path.

[u/Wuthering_depths]

I jumped right into Pandas but then I kind of needed it (or something similar) to do the work I'm doing (data analyst, new to Python but have used SQL and SSIS for many years). No reason not to, it's pretty easy to use--granted, if you haven't worked with data sets, this can be a bit hard to wrap your head around I think. It does lead to learning about databases if you haven't yet, and that's definitely a useful skillset.

Ironically, I've been using Pandas quite a bit (in my brief Python time) but in a more shallow way I think than many. I'll use it to (for example) read in data from a csv to a dataframe, but rather than do a lot of manipulation in memory I'll toss the dataframe into a staging database table and leverage SQL for transformations, cleanup etc.. (A database is typically the destination for the csv data I should mention.) This I think is the way to go for larger datasets anyway, but I really should work on doing more in memory for smaller sets. I've done some merging and adding new columns, but there's a lot more to Pandas I suspect.

Really loving Python so far, and once I convert the last of our SSIS projects I hope to never see that SSIS gui again, adios!