02-install.md

Install software on your computer

Install git.

You have it installed if you can run git --version at the command line and get output like git version 2.3.5.

Install Anaconda.

There are two things you can verify to check your install.

First, from the command line, all of the following should start up some kind of Python interpreter:

python
ipython
ipython notebook
spyder

Second, inside any of those Python interpreters, you should be able to do all of these without error:

import numpy
import scipy
import matplotlib
import pandas
import statsmodels
import sklearn

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Did you install Python 2 or 3? Why? How can you check the version of Python installed if you happen to be on an unfamiliar computer?

Python 2.7.10. That was the default installed with Anaconda but I read some information about which is best, and the consensus seemed to be that 2.7 is better for beginners because there is more documentation available, which I'll definitely need.

Use python --version from the command line to see which version is installed.

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Homebrew

If you use a Mac, install Homebrew if you don't have it yet. You could use Homebrew to manage your git and python installs as well, but the methods given above are very good and more cross-platform.