Loading data and creating a data model

In order to create an example application, I've downloaded a dataset from the Center for Machine Learning and Intelligent Systems at the University of California, Irvine. They have a dataset repository you can use for training purposes. The datasets are organized by task (clustering, classification, regression, and others), by attribute type, by domain area, and so on. This is a very useful resource to practice your new skills and we'll be using it again in this book.

Note

You can find more information from Bache, K. and Lichman, M. (2013); UCI Machine Learning Repository [http://archive.ics.uci.edu/ml]; Irvine, CA: University of California, School of Information and Computer Science.

In this chapter, we're going to use a dataset called Wholesale customers Data Set. The dataset is originated from a larger database – Abreu, N. (2011); Analise do perfil do cliente Recheio e desenvolvimento de um sistema promocional; Mestrado em Marketing, ISCTE-IUL, Lisbon...