Data Science at the Command Line, 2nd Edition

Preface

Data science is an exciting field to work in. It’s also still relatively young. Unfortunately, many people, and many companies as well, believe that you need new technology to tackle the problems posed by data science. However, as this book demonstrates, many things can be accomplished by using the command line instead, and sometimes in a much more efficient way.

During my PhD program, I gradually switched from using Microsoft Windows to using Linux. Because this transition was a bit scary at first, I started with having both operating systems installed next to each other (known as a dual-boot). The urge to switch back and forth between Microsoft Windows and Linux eventually faded, and at some point I was even tinkering around with Arch Linux, which allows you to build up your own custom Linux machine from scratch. All you’re given is the command line, and it’s up to you what to make of it. Out of necessity, I quickly became very comfortable using the command line. Eventually, as spare time got more precious, I settled down with a Linux distribution known as Ubuntu because of its ease of use and large community. However, the command line is still where I’m spending most of my time.

It actually wasn’t too long ago that I realized that the command line is not just for installing software, configuring systems, and searching files. I started learning about tools such as cut, sort, and sed. These are examples of command-line tools that take data as input, do something to it, ...