This chapter will introduce you to the fundamental Python data types - lists, sets, and strings. These data containers are critical as they provide the basis for storing and looping over ordered data. To make things interesting, you'll apply what you learn about these types to answer questions about the New York Baby Names dataset!

Introduction and lists

Manipulating lists for fun and profit

Looping over lists

Meet the tuples

Data type usage

Using and unpacking tuples

Making tuples by accident

Strings

Formatted String Literals ("f" strings)

Combining multiple strings

Finding strings in other strings

Fundamental Sequence Data Types

At the root of all things Python is a dictionary. Herein, you'll learn how to use them to safely handle data that can viewed in a variety of ways to answer even more questions about the New York Baby Names dataset. You'll explore how to loop through data in a dictionary, access nested data, add new data, and come to appreciate all of the wonderful capabilities of Python dictionaries.

Using dictionaries

Creating and looping through dictionaries

Safely finding by key

Altering dictionaries

Adding and extending dictionaries

Popping and deleting from dictionaries

Pythonically using dictionaries

Working with dictionaries more pythonically

Checking dictionaries for data

Mixed data types in dictionaries

Dealing with nested dictionaries

Dealing with nested mixed types

Dictionaries - The Root of Python

Let's take a step away from dictionaries and look at some other common numeric and boolean data types along with sets.

Numeric data types

Options

Integer

Float

Decimal

Choosing when to use integers and floats

Printing floats

Division with integers and floats

Booleans - The logical data type

More than just true and false

Comparisons

Truthy, True, Falsey, and False

Sets (unordered data with optimized logic operations)

Determining set differences

Finding all the data and the overlapping data between sets

Numeric Data Types, Booleans, and Sets

Some data types are composites of other data types and give me even more capabilities than a fundamental data type.  Let's explore a few complex types from the collections module and data classes.

Counting made easy

Using Counter on lists

Finding most common elements

Dictionaries of unknown structure - Defaultdict

Creating dictionaries of an unknown structure

Safely appending to a key's value list

What do you mean I don't have any class? Namedtuple

Creating namedtuples for storing data

Leveraging attributes on namedtuples

Dataclasses

Creating a dataclass

Using dataclasses

Wrap-up

Advanced Data Types

Baby names

Chicago crime

CTA daily station totals

CTA daily summary totals

Have you got your basic Python programming chops down but are yearning for more? Then this is the course for you. Herein, you'll consolidate and practice your knowledge of lists, dictionaries, tuples, sets, and date times. You'll see their relevance in working with lots of real data and how to leverage several of them in concert to solve multistep problems, including an extended case study using Chicago metropolitan area transit data. You'll also learn how to use many of the objects in the Python Collections module, which will allow you to store and manipulate your data for a variety of purposes. After taking this course, you'll be ready to tackle many data challenges Pythonically.

Python Toolbox

Data Types for Data Science in Python

Consolidate and extend your knowledge of Python data types such as lists, dictionaries, and tuples, leveraging them to solve Data Science problems.

Data Types in Python

Associate Python Developer

Python Programming Fundamentals

Where approximation is good enough (most programs)

Choosing when to use integers and floats

Data Types in Python

Hands-on interactive exercise