In this chapter, we have established the conceptual foundations upon which we will build our understanding and practice of predictive analytics. We defined predictive analytics as an applied field that uses a variety of quantitative methods that make use of data in order to make predictions. We also discussed at a high level each of the stages in the predictive analytics process. In addition, we presented the main tools of Python's data science stack that we will use during the book. We will learn more about these libraries as we use them for doing predictive analytics.
Keep in mind that this will be the only conceptual chapter in the book; from the following chapter, everything will be hands-on, as promised in the title!
