If you want to become a professional data scientist, it’s important to take a little time to “set yourself up for success” by installing and learning to use the right tools on your computer.

You will be able to:

• List some tools used by professional data scientists, and why they are useful

• Python - There are many languages that can be used for data science, but these days most data scientists are using Python to write their code.
• Jupyter Notebook - Most of those data scientists use Jupyter Notebook for writing their Python code. Jupyter Notebook is a tool that allows you to mix comments in-between your code snippets so you can document and share your thought process and make it easier for others to review, replicate, and expand on your work. It's also what we're using for almost all of our lessons in this course.
• Anaconda - Anaconda is one of the most popular ways for data scientists to install Python and Jupyter on their computers. It also provides package management and virtual environments so you can get all the latest data science tools running, like NumPy, Scikit-Learn, and Tensorflow, and so you can use different versions of Python and your packages for different projects without them conflicting with each other.
• Git - Git is a version control system. It’s a way of keeping track of all the changes made across your project. Think of it like “track changes” in Word - but with the ability to track changes across multiple documents. At Flatiron School, we use Git to keep track of all of the lessons we create and all the changes we make to them.
• GitHub - GitHub is a website where data scientists (and programmers) can save their work in case their computer breaks, and share it with their team or the world. At Flatiron School, we store all of our lessons on GitHub.

It’s going to take us a few minutes to get this all installed, but once we do, not only will you be set-up for working through the course, but you’ll also have a professional data science setup on your computer for any future courses or projects you want to work on.

There are many amazing computing devices available these days, but not all of them will allow you to do data science. We love smartphones, flip phones, Chromebooks, tablets (including iPads), Game Boys, Nintendo Switches, Rokus and Arduinos. But you’re not going to be able to complete this course on any of those devices.

You’re going to need a computer (laptop or desktop). It should be running a recent (last 3-4 years) version of MacOS, Windows or Linux, and ideally, it should have 8Gb of RAM and at least 20Gb free hard drive space. More information in this document.

In the next few lessons, you'll install and configure some of the primary tools that you'll use as a data scientist.