Creating sample data for toy analysis

If possible, use some of your own data for this book, but in the event you cannot, we'll learn how we can use scikit-learn to create toy data. scikit-learn's pseudo, theoretically constructed data is very interesting in its own right.

Getting ready

Very similar to getting built-in datasets, fetching new datasets, and creating sample datasets, the functions that are used follow the naming convention make_*. Just to be clear, this data is purely artificial:

from sklearn import datasets
datasets.make_*?

datasets.make_biclusters
datasets.make_blobs
datasets.make_checkerboard
datasets.make_circles
datasets.make_classification
...

To save typing, import the datasets module as d, and numpy as np:

import sklearn.datasets as d
import numpy as np

How to do it...

This section will walk you through the creation of several datasets. In addition to the sample datasets, these will be used throughout the book to create data with the necessary characteristics for the algorithms...