Scipy Lecture Notes

A compact course book that teaches data science with Python from the first line of code, covering NumPy arrays, pandas DataFrames, data cleaning, and plotting. Short enough to work through in a single term.

Afrand Agah

The most widely used free Python book for people who want to work with data rather than build software. Teaches the language through practical tasks: reading files, scraping web data, calling APIs, and storing results in databases.

Charles R. Severance

Exploratory data analysis taught as a working process: import and clean the data, explore one variable, then pairs, then build models. Every technique is shown as Python code applied to a real national survey dataset.

Allen B. Downey