The Data Science Toolkit: 24 free data science tools

Tools are an important element of the data science field. The open-source community has been
contributing to the data science toolkit for years which has led to major advancements to the
field. There has been debate in the data science community about the use of open source
technology surpassing proprietary software offered by players such as IBM and Microsoft. In
fact, many of the big enterprises have started to contribute to open source solutions so they can
stay top of mind for users and the data science toolkit has increasingly become one dominated by
open-source tools.

Since there are a wide variety of open source tools available from data-mining platforms to
programming languages, we put together a mix of technology that data scientists could add to
their data science toolkit.

Our Favorite Data Science Tools

1.-R

R is a programming language used for data manipulation and graphics. Originating in 1995, this
is a popular tool used among data scientists and analysts. It is the open-source version of the S
language widely used for research in statistics. According to data scientists, R is one of the easier
languages to learn as there are numerous packages and guides available for users.

2-Python

Python is another widely used language among data scientists, created by Dutch programmer
Guido Van Rossum. It’s a general-purpose programming language, focusing on readability and
simplicity. If you are not a programmer but are looking to learn, this is a great language to start
with. It’s easier than other general-purpose languages and there are a number of tutorials
available for non-programmers to learn. You can do all sorts of tasks such as sentiment analysis
or time series analysis with Python, a very versatile general-purpose programming language.
You can canvass open data sets and do things like sentiment analysis of Twitter accounts.

3-KNIME

KNIME is a software company with headquarters in major tech hubs around the world. The
company offers an open-source analytics platform written in Java, used for data reporting,
mining, and predictive analysis. This base platform can be advanced with a suite of commercial
extensions offered by the company, including collaboration, productivity and performance
extensions.

4-Gawk
Gawk is the open-source version of awk, a special-purpose programming language used for
working on files. Awk is one of the many components of the Unix operating system. Gawk is a
GNU implementation which makes it easy to make changes in text files and allows users to
extract data and generate reports.

5-Weka

Weka is a machine learning software written in Java by The University of Waikato. It is used for
data mining, allowing users to work with large sets of data. Some of the features of Weka
include preprocessing, classification, regression, clustering, experiments, workflow, and
visualization. However, it lacks advanced functionality compared to R and Python which is why
it’s not as widely used in professional settings.

6-Scala

Scala is a general-purpose programming language that runs on the Java platform. It’s great for
large datasets and is largely used with big data tools like Apache Spark and Apache Kafka. This
functional programming style results in speed and higher productivity which has led it to slowly
be adopted by an increasing number of companies as an essential part of their data science
toolkit.

7-SQL

Structured Query Language or SQL is a special-purpose programming language for data stored
in relational databases. SQL is used for more basic data analysis and can perform tasks such as
organizing and manipulating data or retrieving data from a database. Since SQL has been used
by organizations for decades, there is a large SQL ecosystem in existence already which data
scientists can tap into. Among data science tools, it ranks as one of the best at filtering and
selecting through databases.

8-RapidMiner

RapidMiner is a predictive analytics tool with visualization and statistical modeling capabilities.
The base of the software which is RapidMiner Studio is a free, open-source platform. The
company also provides enterprise-level add-ons which can be bought to supplement the base
platform.

9-Scikit-learn

Scikit-learn is a machine learning library, largely written in the Python programming language
and built on the SciPy library. It was originally developed as a Google Summer of Code project
where Google awarded students who were able to produce valuable open-source software.
Scikit-learn offers a number of features including data classification, regression, clustering,
dimensionality reduction, model selection, and preprocessing.

Related: A Beginners Guide to Neural Networks in Python & SciKit Learn

10-Apache Hadoop

Apache Hadoop software library is a framework, written in Java, for processing large and
complex datasets. The base modules for the Apache Hadoop framework include Hadoop
Common, Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS), Hadoop Yarn, and Hadoop MapReduce.

11-Apache Mahout

Apache Mahout is an environment for building scalable machine learning algorithms. The
algorithms are written on top of Hadoop. Mahout implements three major machine learning
tasks: collaborative filtering, clustering, and categorization.

12-Apache Spark

Apache Spark is a cluster-computing framework for data analysis. It has been deployed in large
organizations for its big data capabilities combined with speed and ease of use. It was originally
developed at the University of California as Spark and later, the source code was donated to the
Apache Foundation so that it could be free forever. It’s often preferred to other big data tools due
to its speed.

13-SciPi

SciPi or Scientific Python is a computing ecosystem based on the Python programming

language. It offers a number of core components including NumPy for numerical computation,
Matplotlib for plotting and the SciPy library which is a collection of algorithms and functions.

14-Orange

Orange is one tool among data science tools that promise to make data science fun and
interactive. Compared to many of the tools discussed here, this one is simple and keeps things
interesting for data scientists. It allows users to analyze and visualize data without the need to
code. It offers machine learning options for beginners.

15-Axiis

Axiis is a lesser-known data visualization framework among data science tools. It allows users to
build charts and explore data using pre-built components in an expressive and concise form.

16-Impala

Impala is the massive parallel processing (MPP) database for Apache Hadoop. It’s used by data
scientists and analysts allowing them to perform SQL queries for data stored in Apache Hadoop
clusters.

17-Apache Drill
Apache Drill is the open-source version of Google’s Dremel for interactive queries of large
databases. It’s powerful, flexible, and agile, supporting data stored in different formats in files or
NoSQL databases and is one of the most versatile data science tools.

18-Data Melt

Data Melt is a mathematical software which will make your life easier with its advanced
mathematical computations, statistical analysis, and data mining capabilities. This software can
be supplemented with programming languages for added customizability and even includes an
extensive library of tutorials.

19-Julia

Julia is a dynamic programming language for technical computing. It’s not widely used but is
gaining popularity among data science tools because of its agility, design, and performance.

20-D3

D3 is a javascript library for building interactive data visualizations within your browser. It
allows data scientists to create rich visualizations with a high level of customizability. It’s a great
addition to your data science toolkit if you’re looking to dynamically express your data insights.

21-Apache Storm
Apache Storm is a computational platform for real-time analytics. It’s often compared to Apache
Spark and is known as a better streaming engine than Spark. It’s written in the Clojure
programming language and is known to be a simple, easy-to-use tool.

22-MongoDB

MongoDB is a NoSQL database known for its scalability and high performance. It provides a
powerful alternative to traditional databases and makes the integration of data in specific
applications easier. It can be an integral part of the data science toolkit if you’re looking to build
large-scale web apps.

23-TensorFlow

TensorFlow is the product of Google’s Brain Team coming together for the purpose of
advancing machine learning .and is very popular among data scientists and machine learning
engineers. It’s a software library for numerical computation and built for everyone from students
and researchers to hackers and innovators. It allows programmers to access the power of deep
learning without needing to understand some of the complicated principles behind it and ranks as
one of the data science tools that helps make deep learning accessible for thousands
of companies.

24-Keras

Keras is a deep learning library written in Python. It runs on TensorFlow allowing for fast
experimentation. Keras was developed to make deep learning models easier and helping users
treat their data intelligently in an efficient manner.