Loading Data and Cleaning It

From a fresh iPython Notebook, we'll load some required libraries and set some global options. As a reminder, all of the libraries we're using come included out-of-the-box with the freely available Enthought Canopy Express Python environment.

Loading Dependencies

In a new iPython Notebook:

import pandas as pd          # our core data analysis toolkit
import numpy as np           # we'll use some timestamp functions
import pylab as pl           # pylab and ggplot are plotting libraries
from ggplot import *
from pandas import read_json # a function for reading data in JSON files

# This option shows our plots directly in iPython Notebooks
%matplotlib inline

# This option gives a more pleasing visual style to our plots
pd.set_option('display.mpl_style', 'default')

# The location of our playtest data file
filepath = "2014-05-13 makescape playtest.json"

Loading and Sorting the Data

def loadDataSortedByTimestamp(filepath):
    x = read_json(filepath)
    x = x.sort(columns='timestamp')
    x.index = range(0, len(x))
    return(x)

ms = loadDataSortedByTimestamp(filepath)

Now that our data is loaded with the variable ms (I chose it as an abbreviation of MakeScape), let's look at it and make sure it loaded properly and it makes sense.