Coding All-in-One For Dummies

Introduction 1

About This Book 2

Foolish Assumptions 2

Icons Used in This Book 3

Beyond the Book 4

Where to Go from Here 4

<b>Book 1: Getting Started with Coding</b><b> 5</b>

<b>Chapter 1: What Is Coding?</b><b> 7</b>

Defining What Code Is 8

Understanding What Coding Can Do for You 9

Surveying the Types of Programming Languages 13

Taking a Tour of a Web App Built with Code 16

<b>Chapter 2: Programming for the Web</b><b> 19</b>

Displaying Web Pages on Your Desktop and Mobile Device 20

Coding Web Applications 26

Coding Mobile Applications 28

<b>Chapter 3: Becoming a Programmer</b><b> 33</b>

Writing Code Using a Process 33

Picking Tools for the Job 38

<b>Book 2: Career Building with Coding</b><b> 43</b>

<b>Chapter 1: Exploring Coding Career Paths</b><b> 45</b>

Augmenting Your Existing Job 46

Finding a New Coding Job 52

<b>Chapter 2: Exploring Undergraduate and Graduate Degrees</b><b> 59</b>

Getting a College Degree 60

Enrolling in an Advanced Degree Program 65

Interning to Build Credibility 68

<b>Chapter 3: Training on the Job</b><b> 73</b>

Taking a Work Project to the Next Level 74

Learning on the Job and after Work 75

Freelancing to Build Confidence and Skills 79

Transitioning to a New Role 80

<b>Chapter 4: Coding Career Myths</b><b> 83</b>

Educational Myths 83

Career Myths 87

<b>Book 3: Basic Web Coding</b><b> 93</b>

<b>Chapter 1: Exploring Basic HTML</b><b> 95</b>

What Does HTML Do? 95

Understanding HTML Structure 96

Getting Familiar with Common HTML Tasks and Tags 102

Styling Me Pretty 107

Building Your First Website Using HTML 109

<b>Chapter 2: Getting More Out of HTML </b><b>113</b>

Organizing Content on the Page 113

Listing Data 115

Putting Data in Tables 118

Filling Out Forms 124

Practicing More with HTML 127

<b>Chapter 3: Getting Stylish with CSS</b><b> 129</b>

What Does CSS Do? 129

CSS Structure 131

Common CSS Tasks and Selectors 135

Styling Me Pretty 146

<b>Chapter 4: Next Steps with CSS </b><b>151</b>

Styling (More) Elements on Your Page 152

Selecting Elements to Style 157

Aligning and Laying Out Your Elements 163

Writing More Advanced CSS 172

<b>Chapter 5: Building Floating Page Layouts </b><b>173</b>

Creating a Basic Two-Column Design 173

Building a Three-Column Design 185

Building a Fixed-Width Layout 193

Building a Centered Fixed-Width Layout 196

<b>Chapter 6: Using Alternative Positioning </b><b>201</b>

Working with Absolute Positioning 201

Managing z-index 206

Building a Page Layout with Absolute Positioning 208

Creating a More Flexible Layout 212

Exploring Other Types of Positioning 216

Flexible Box Layout Model 221

<b>Book 4: Advanced Web Coding </b><b>231</b>

<b>Chapter 1: Working Faster with Twitter Bootstrap </b><b>233</b>

Figuring Out What Bootstrap Does 234

Installing Bootstrap 235

Understanding the Layout Options 236

Coding Basic Web Page Elements 243

Build the Airbnb Home Page 247

<b>Chapter 2: Adding in JavaScript </b><b>249</b>

What Does JavaScript Do? 249

Understanding JavaScript Structure 251

Coding Common JavaScript Tasks 253

Writing Your First JavaScript Program 263

Using JavaScript Libraries 267

<b>Chapter 3: Understanding Callbacks and Closures</b><b> 269</b>

What Are Callbacks? 269

Understanding Closures 274

Using Closures 277

<b>Chapter 4: Embracing AJAX and JSON </b><b>279</b>

Working behind the Scenes with AJAX 279

Putting Objects in Motion with JSON 289

<b>Chapter 5: jQuery </b><b>295</b>

Writing More and Doing Less 295

Getting Started with jQuery 296

The jQuery Object 297

Is Your Document Ready? 298

Using jQuery Selectors 298

Changing Things with jQuery 300

Events 302

Effects 305

AJAX 309

<b>Book 5: Creating Web Applications</b><b> 311</b>

<b>Chapter 1: Building Your Own App </b><b>313</b>

Building a Location-Based Offer App 313

Following an App Development Process 315

Planning Your First Web Application 316

Exploring the Overall Process 317

Meeting the People Who Bring a Web App to Life 319

<b>Chapter 2: Researching Your First Web Application</b><b> 325</b>

Dividing the App into Steps 326

Identifying Research Sources 333

Researching the Steps in the McDuck's Offer App 335

Choosing a Solution for Each Step 338

<b>Chapter 3: Coding and Debugging Your First Web Application </b><b>341</b>

Getting Ready to Code 342

Coding Your First Web Application 342

Debugging Your App 350

<b>Book 6: Selecting Data Analysis Tools </b><b>351</b>

<b>Chapter 1: Wrapping Your Head around Python</b><b> 353</b>

What Does Python Do? 354

Defining Python Structure 355

Coding Common Python Tasks and Commands 357

Shaping Your Strings 363

Building a Simple Tip Calculator Using Python 365

<b>Chapter 2: Installing a Python Distribution </b><b>367</b>

Choosing a Python Distribution with Machine Learning in Mind 368

Installing Python on Linux 371

Installing Python on Mac OS X 372

Installing Python on Windows 374

Downloading the Data Sets and Example Code 378

<b>Chapter 3: Working with Real Data</b><b> 387</b>

Uploading, Streaming, and Sampling Data 388

Accessing Data in Structured Flat-File Form 392

Reading from a text file 393

Reading CSV delimited format 394

Reading Excel and other Microsoft Office files 396

Sending Data in Unstructured File Form 397

Managing Data from Relational Databases 400

Interacting with Data from NoSQL Databases 401

Accessing Data from the Web 402

<b>Book 7: Evaluating Data </b><b>405</b>

<b>Chapter 1: Conditioning Your Data </b><b>407</b>

Juggling between NumPy and pandas 408

Validating Your Data 409

Manipulating Categorical Variables 414

Dealing with Dates in Your Data 419

Dealing with Missing Data 421

Slicing and Dicing: Filtering and Selecting Data 424

Concatenating and Transforming 426

Aggregating Data at Any Level 430

<b>Chapter 2: Shaping Data </b><b>433</b>

Working with HTML Pages 434

Working with Raw Text 436

Using the Bag of Words Model and Beyond 442

Working with Graph Data 447

<b>Chapter 3: Getting a Crash Course in MatPlotLib</b><b> 451</b>

Starting with a Graph 452

Setting the Axis, Ticks, Grids 455

Defining the Line Appearance 458

Using Labels, Annotations, and Legends 462

<b>Chapter 4: Visualizing the Data </b><b>467</b>

Choosing the Right Graph 468

Creating Advanced Scatterplots 475

Plotting Time Series 478

Plotting Geographical Data 481

Visualizing Graphs 483

<b>Chapter 5: Exploring Data Analysis </b><b>489</b>

The EDA Approach 490

Defining Descriptive Statistics for Numeric Data 491

Counting for Categorical Data 495

Creating Applied Visualization for EDA 498

Understanding Correlation 504

Modifying Data Distributions 508

<b>Chapter 6: Exploring Four Simple and Effective Algorithms</b><b> 511</b>

Guessing the Number: Linear Regression 512

Moving to Logistic Regression 515

Making Things as Simple as Naive Bayes 518

Learning Lazily with Nearest Neighbors 522

<b>Book 8: Essentials of Machine Learning </b><b>527</b>

<b>Chapter 1: Introducing How Machines Learn</b><b> 529</b>

Getting the Real Story about AI 530

Learning in the Age of Big Data 541

<b>Chapter 2: Demystifying the Math behind Machine Learning </b><b>553</b>

Working with Data 554

Exploring the World of Probabilities 563

Describing the Use of Statistics 568

<b>Chapter 3: Descending the Right Curve </b><b>571</b>

Interpreting Learning as Optimization 572

Exploring Cost Functions 576

Descending the Error Curve 578

Updating by Mini-Batch and Online 581

<b>Chapter 4: Validating Machine Learning</b><b> 585</b>

Checking Out-of-Sample Errors 586

Getting to Know the Limits of Bias 589

Keeping Model Complexity in Mind 591

Keeping Solutions Balanced 592

Training, Validating, and Testing 595

Resorting to Cross-Validation 596

Looking for Alternatives in Validation 597

Optimizing Cross-Validation Choices 598

Avoiding Sample Bias and Leakage Traps 601

<b>Book 9: Applying Machine Learning </b><b>603</b>

<b>Chapter 1: Starting with Simple Learners </b><b>605</b>

Discovering the Incredible Perceptron 606

Growing Greedy Classification Trees 610

Taking a Probabilistic Turn 615

<b>Chapter 2: Leveraging Similarity </b><b>623</b>

Measuring Similarity between Vectors 624

Using Distances to Locate Clusters 626

Tuning the K-Means Algorithm 630

Searching for Classification by k-Nearest Neighbors 637

Leveraging the Correct K Parameter 638

<b>Chapter 3: Hitting Complexity with Neural Networks </b><b>643</b>

Learning and Imitating from Nature 644

Struggling with Overfitting 653

Introducing Deep Learning 657

<b>Chapter 4: Resorting to Ensembles of Learners </b><b>661</b>

Leveraging Decision Trees 662

Working with Almost Random Guesses 670

Boosting Smart Predictors 673

Averaging Different Predictors 676

<b>Chapter 5: Real-World Applications</b><b> 677</b>

Classifying Images 677

Scoring Opinions and Sentiments 691

Using Scoring and Classification 703

Recommending Products and Movies 710

Index 725