This chapter will provide an introduction to Python for analytics. It is meant mainly for novice programmers or developers who are not familiar with Python. By the end of the chapter, you will have a basic familiarity with the features of the Python base language, which is integral for healthcare analytics and machine learning. You will also understand how to get started using pandas and scikit-learn, two important Python libraries for analytics.

If you would like to follow along using the Jupyter Notebook, we encourage you to refer to the directions in Chapter 1, Introduction to Healthcare Analytics, to start a new Jupyter session. The notebook for this chapter is also available online at the book's official code repository.