In this chapter, we are going to introduce Spark and learn the core concepts, such as, SparkContext, and Spark tools such as SparkConf and Spark shell. The only prerequisite is the knowledge of basic Python concepts and the desire to seek insight from big data. We will learn how to analyze and discover patterns with Spark SQL to improve our business intelligence. Also, you will be able to quickly iterate through your solution by setting to PySpark for your own computer. By the end of the book, you will be able to work with real-life messy data sets using PySpark to get practical big data experience.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• An overview of PySpark
• Setting up Spark on Windows and PySpark
• Core concepts in Spark and PySpark