intro-to-data-science-udacity

Repo for tools, tricks, and a virtual machine for "Intro to Data Science" on Udacity

How to setup and use a virtual machine

• Install VirtualBox: https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads
• Install Vagrant: http://www.vagrantup.com/downloads.html
• Install Git: http://git-scm.com/downloads
• Download this repository's contents to your machine. Either:
  1. Clone this repo to your computer: git clone https://github.com/asimihsan/intro-to-data-science-udacity.git, OR
  2. Download then extract a ZIP file of this repo.
• Change directory to your clone: cd intro-to-data-science-udacity
• From the root of the clone run: vagrant up
• Check for errors. There should be none. A warning about the version of the Guest Additions is harmless.
• SSH onto the box using: vagrant ssh.
• For more basic information on using Vagrant refer to the official documentation: http://docs.vagrantup.com/v2/getting-started/index.html
• After starting the virtual machine you can run an IPython Notebook server by running the following inside the guest VM: ipython notebook --ip 0.0.0.0 --pylab inline. Then on your host machine browse to http://localhost:58888. Congratulations!

Using Vagrant you can also set up Amazon EC2 instances. See the following for more information: https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant-aws

If you want to quickly share files on your local host machine with the guest VM note that the root of this repository is mapped to /vagrant within the guest VM. You could either copy files or use softlinks to share host directories on your guest; both the host and guest can modify files and both will see the changes.

Using IPython Notebook from the VM on your host machine

When you run ipython notebook by default it starts an HTTP server on port 8888 but only bound to the local loopback interface. In the VM you must explicitly call ipython notebook --ip 0.0.0.0 instead. Vagrant will then attempt to map port 58888 on your host PC to port 8888 in the guest PC. Try to browse to http://localhost:58888 and you should be able to access your IPython Notebook.