Three great Python books to get you going (they are free)

In this short post I am going to share three great, and free, Python books. I think that you could easily go from the first I will list (Think Python) to the last (Think Bayes) and you will have started your journey into Python and data science really nicely. You will have a lot of knowledge to go further with! The three books are written by Allen Downey.

Think Python

Think Python: How to Think As A Computer Scientist are a great starter for someone that want to learn Python. The first edition uses Python 2 and the second edition uses Python 3. If you are completely new to Python I suggest that you go for the second edition. This book introduces beginners to the Python language. 

Think Stats

You are of course interested in statistics and Python, right? Then you should go on to Think Stats. As with Think Python there are a first edition and a second edition for Python 2 and 3, respectively. Think stats introduces you to exploratory statistics using Python. Really handy books and you will learn a lot. Both on computation and statistical programming (i.e., in Python).

Think Bayes

Think Bayes  introduces you to bayesian statistics. Bayesian statistics is really up and coming in the cognitive sciences. It offers very intuitive interpretation (p-values are not intuitive!). As for now you have to read a book written for Python 2. However, you will find updated code on Allen Downey's github page: updated code. I would suggest that you read the book but look on the new code and learn how to do it in Python 3. 

There are probably a bunch of more free books out there for learning Python and statistics. I stick with these three in this post because they are short and you will learn so much from them.

That is it for now, take care.