Data Engineering with Python Virtual Classroom Live February 24, 2025

Course Overview

Chapter 1. Defining Data Engineering

• Data is King
• Translating Data into Operational and Business Insights
• What is Data Engineering
• The Data-Related Roles
• The Data Science Skill Sets
• The Data Engineer Role
• Core Skills and Competencies
• An Example of a Data Product
• What is Data Wrangling (Munging)?
• The Data Exchange Interoperability Options
• Summary

Chapter 2. Distributed Computing Concepts for Data Engineers

• The Traditional Client–Server Processing Pattern
• Enter Distributed Computing
• Data Physics
• Data Locality (Distributed Computing Economics)
• The CAP Theorem
• Mechanisms to Guarantee a Single CAP Property
• Eventual Consistency
• Summary

Chapter 3. Data Processing Phases

• Typical Data Processing Pipeline
• Data Discovery Phase
• Data Harvesting Phase
• Data Priming Phase
• Exploratory Data Analysis
• Model Planning Phase
• Model Building Phase
• Communicating the Results
• Production Roll-out
• Data Logistics and Data Governance
• Data Processing Workflow Engines
• Apache Airflow
• Data Lineage and Provenance
• Apache NiFi
• Summary

Chapter 4. Quick Introduction to Python for Data Engineers

• What is Python?
• Additional Documentation
• Which version of Python am I running?
• Python Dev Tools and REPLs
• IPython
• Jupyter
• Jupyter Operation Modes
• Jupyter Common Commands
• Anaconda
• Python Variables and Basic Syntax
• Variable Scopes
• PEP8
• The Python Programs
• Getting Help
• Variable Types
• Assigning Multiple Values to Multiple Variables
• Null (None)
• Strings
• Finding Index of a Substring
• String Splitting
• Triple-Delimited String Literals
• Raw String Literals
• String Formatting and Interpolation
• Boolean
• Boolean Operators
• Numbers
• Looking Up the Runtime Type of a Variable
• Divisions
• Assignment-with-Operation
• Dates and Times
• Comments:
• Relational Operators
• The if-elif-else Triad
• An if-elif-else Example
• Conditional Expressions (a.k.a. Ternary Operator)
• The While-Break-Continue Triad
• The for Loop
• try-except-finally
• Lists
• Main List Methods
• Dictionaries
• Working with Dictionaries
• Sets
• Common Set Operations
• Set Operations Examples
• Finding Unique Elements in a List
• Enumerate
• Tuples
• Unpacking Tuples
• Functions
• Dealing with Arbitrary Number of Parameters
• Keyword Function Parameters
• The range Object
• Random Numbers
• Python Modules
• Importing Modules
• Installing Modules
• Listing Methods in a Module
• Creating Your Own Modules
• Creating a Runnable Application
• List Comprehension
• Zipping Lists
• Working with Files
• Reading and Writing Files
• Reading Command-Line Parameters
• Accessing Environment Variables
• What is Functional Programming (FP)?
• Terminology: Higher-Order Functions
• Lambda Functions in Python
• Example: Lambdas in the Sorted Function
• Other Examples of Using Lambdas
• Regular Expressions
• Using Regular Expressions Examples
• Python Data Science-Centric Libraries
• Summary

Chapter 5. Practical Introduction to NumPy

• SciPy
• NumPy
• The First Take on NumPy Arrays
• Getting Help
• Understanding Axes
• Indexing Elements in a NumPy Array
• NumPy Arrays
• Understanding Types
• Re-Shaping
• Commonly Used Array Metrics
• Commonly Used Aggregate Functions
• Sorting Arrays
• Vectorization
• Broadcasting
• Filtering
• Array Arithmetic Operations
• Array Slicing
• 2-D Array Slicing
• The Linear Algebra Functions
• Summary

Chapter 6. Practical Introduction to Pandas

• What is pandas?
• The Series Object
• Accessing Values and Indexes in Series
• Setting Up Your Own Index
• Using the Series Index as a Lookup Key
• Can I Pack a Python Dictionary into a Series?
• The DataFrame Object
• The DataFrame's Value Proposition
• Creating a pandas DataFrame
• Getting DataFrame Metrics
• Accessing DataFrame Columns
• Accessing DataFrame Rows
• Accessing DataFrame Cells
• Using iloc
• Using loc
• Examples of Using loc
• DataFrames are Mutable via Object Reference!
• Deleting Rows and Columns
• Adding a New Column to a DataFrame
• Appending / Concatenating DataFrame and Series Objects
• Example of Appending / Concatenating DataFrames
• Re-indexing Series and DataFrames
• Getting Descriptive Statistics of DataFrame Columns
• Getting Descriptive Statistics of DataFrames
• Applying a Function
• Sorting DataFrames
• Reading From CSV Files
• Writing to the System Clipboard
• Writing to a CSV File
• Fine-Tuning the Column Data Types
• Changing the Type of a Column
• What May Go Wrong with Type Conversion
• Summary

Chapter 7. Descriptive Statistics Computing Features in Python

• Descriptive Statistics
• Non-uniformity of a Probability Distribution
• Using NumPy for Calculating Descriptive Statistics Measures
• Finding Min and Max in NumPy
• Using pandas for Calculating Descriptive Statistics Measures
• Correlation
• Regression and Correlation
• Covariance
• Getting Pairwise Correlation and Covariance Measures
• Finding Min and Max in pandas DataFrame
• Summary

Chapter 8. Data Grouping and Aggregation with pandas

• Data Aggregation and Grouping
• Sample Data Set
• The pandas.core.groupby.SeriesGroupBy Object
• Grouping by Two or More Columns
• Emulating SQL's WHERE Clause
• The Pivot Tables
• Cross-Tabulation
• Summary

Chapter 9. Repairing and Normalizing Data

• Repairing and Normalizing Data
• Dealing with the Missing Data
• Sample Data Set
• Getting Info on Null Data
• Dropping a Column
• Interpolating Missing Data in pandas
• Replacing the Missing Values with the Mean Value
• Scaling (Normalizing) the Data
• Data Preprocessing with scikit-learn
• Scaling with the scale() Function
• The MinMaxScaler Object
• Summary

Chapter 10. Data Visualization in Python using matplotlib

• Data Visualization
• What is matplotlib?
• Getting Started with matplotlib
• The matplotlib.pyplot.plot() Function
• The matplotlib.pyplot.scatter() Function
• Labels and Titles
• Styles
• The matplotlib.pyplot.bar() Function
• The matplotlib.pyplot.hist () Function
• The matplotlib.pyplot.pie () Function
• The Figure Object
• The matplotlib.pyplot.subplot() Function
• Selecting a Grid Cell
• Saving Figures to a File
• Summary

Chapter 11. Parallel Data Processing with PySpark

• What is Apache Spark
• The Spark Platform
• Languages Supported by Spark
• Running Spark on a Cluster
• The Spark Shell
• The High-Level Execution Flow in Stand-alone Spark Cluster
• The Spark Application Architecture
• The Resilient Distributed Dataset (RDD)
• The Lineage Concept
• Datasets and DataFrames
• Data Partitioning
• Data Partitioning Diagram
• Finding the Most Frequently Used Words in PySpark
• Summary

Chapter 12. Python as a Cloud Scripting Language

• Python's Value
• Python on AWS
• AWS SDK For Python (boto3)
• What is Serverless Computing?
• How Functions Work
• The AWS Lambda Event Handler
• What is AWS Glue?
• PySpark on Glue - Sample Script
• Summary

Lab Exercises

Lab 1. A/B Testing Data Engineering Tasks Project
Lab 2. Data Availability and Consistency
Lab 3. Using Jupyter Notebook
Lab 4. Understanding Python
Lab 5. Data Engineering Project
Lab 6. Understanding NumPy
Lab 7. A NumPy Project
Lab 8. Understanding pandas
Lab 9. Working with Files in pandas
Lab 10. Data Grouping and Aggregation
Lab 11. Repairing and Normalizing Data
Lab 12. Data Visualization in Jupyter Notebooks using matplotlib
Lab 13. Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA)
Lab 14. Correlating Cause and Effect
Lab 15. Using the Parquet Data Format

Prerequisites

Participants are expected to have practical experience coding in one or more modern programming languages.  Knowledge of Python is desirable but not necessary.  The students are expected to be able to quickly learn the new material, reinforce the knowledge of a learned topic by doing programming exercises (labs), and then apply their knowledge in data engineering mini projects.