[Tutor] getting and using information dict objects

[Matthew Johnson]

I can see i was being unclear: i wish to replace my analysis in excel
with analysis in python.

I am fairly sure i am querying the FRED API, but i am unsure how to
_access and use_ the dict objects that it is returning. For example,
how would i just print out values?

Thanks for your help

On 24/02/2013, at 9:12 AM, Albert-Jan Roskam <fomcl at yahoo.com> wrote:

>
>
>> I am trying to make a move from excel to python. My main need is
>
>> economic data -- to do economic analysis.
>
> If you say Python and Excel the first thing that comes to mind is the xlrd package
>
> <snip>
>
>> The end game for me is making plots of variables, combining them, and
>> doing regressions -- i cannot see how i might take what i'm getting
>> from these FRED / Python dicts to actual data analysis.
>>
>> Could someone please help me take these first steps?
>
> I'm not familiar with the Fred package. Pandas (http://pandas.pydata.org/) seems to be perfect for what you're doing. It's an R-like layer on top of numpy. It can be used to read Excel and many other formats and it works well with matplotlib. It's a cool tool to manipulate/massage/munge data, then analyze it (though R has still more, often ueber-exotic, stats). Its origin lies in the analysis of... economic data. Best used with IPython.
>