These are all excellent data analysis tools. I cam across some python tutorials on data sciences and wanted to follow the examples from the video.. so went ahead and installed these python packages. This post is here for future reference on the hurdles I had and how I solved them and maybe help somebody else.

1. Make sure you have Xcode command lines tools. You can install that by -

xcode-select install

2. Install Homebrew if you don’t already have it. As simple as just running this on your command line -

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/go/install)"

3. Run the following to make sure homebrew is installed properly. You will be suggested to change your path so /usr/local/bin has priority

4. Install homebrew python -

brew install python  
which python

you should see ‘/usr/local/bin/python’ when you execute which python

4. Now begin installing packages one at a time

brew install gfortran  
pip install numpy  
pip install scipy  
pip install pandas

5. The next package I tried was matplotlib, but that failed with an error about a file now found.. here is a part of what I saw

pip install matplotlib  
# lots of install details here...  
/usr/X11/include/ft2build.h:56:10: fatal error:
'freetype/config/ftheader.h' file not found  
#include <freetype/config/ftheader.h>  
^  
1 error generated.  
error: command 'clang' failed with exit status 1  
----------------------------------------

so I installed freetype from homebrew and retried installing matplotlib -

brew install freetype  
pip install matplotlib

Unfortunately, I got the same error. I saw a solution on stack overflow to create a symlink to the freetype directory in the expected location.

sudo ln -s /usr/X11/include/freetype2/freetype/
/usr/X11/include/freetype  
pip install matplotlib

It worked this time. It’s a hack to do it this way.. just remember you did this. If the package gets updated later, just remember to remove this link and try installing the normal way.

6. Install scikit-learn

pip install scikit-learn

7. In case you want to play with iPython notebook, you would need the following -

pip install ipython  
pip install tornado  
pip install pyzmq  
pip install jinja2

Thats it.. you now have all scientific packages installed!!

You could also take the easier route and install one of the following python distributions -

• Anaconda from Continuum Analytics
• Enthought Canopy

Happy Data hacking!