Introduction

With the release of version 3.5, Python has introduced type hints: code annotations that, through additional tooling, can check if you’re using your code correctly.

Long-time Python users might cringe at the thought of new code needing type hinting to work properly, but we need not worry: Guido himself wrote in PEP 484, “no type checking happens at runtime.”

The feature has been proposed mainly to open up Python code for easier static analysis and refactoring.

Introduction to Pandas

So, what is Pandas – practically speaking? In short, it’s the major data analysis library for Python. For scientists, students, and professional developers alike, Pandas represents a central reason for any learning or interaction with Python, as opposed to a statistics-specific language like R, or a proprietary academic package like SPSS or Matlab. (Fun fact – Pandas is named after the term Panel Data, and was originally created for the analysis of financial data tables). I like to think that the final “s” stands for Series or Statistics.

Introduction: balanced and imbalanced datasets

Close your eyes. Now imagine a perfect data world. What do you see? What do you wish to see? Exactly, me too. A flawlessly balanced dataset. A collection of data whose labels form a magnificent 1:1 ratio: 50% of this, 50% of that; not a bit to the left, nor a bit to the right. Just perfectly balanced, as all things should be. Now open your eyes, and come back to the real world.

The Python implementation presented may be found in the Kite repository on Github.

Biology inspires the Artificial Neural Network

The Artificial Neural Network (ANN) is an attempt at modeling the information processing capabilities of the biological nervous system. The human body is made up of trillions of cells, and the nervous system cells – called neurons – are specialized to carry “messages” through an electrochemical process. The nodes in ANN are equivalent to those of our neurons, whose nodes are connected to each other by Synaptic Weights (or simply weights)  – equivalent to the synaptic connections between axons and dendrites of the biological neuron.