Installing Python on your computer has gotten much easier over the past few years. If you use Microsoft Windows, you can install it directly from the Windows Store at this link:
For the purposes of this book, you can accept all the defaults.
If you are using a macOS or Linux machine, you probably already have Python installed, but it might be Python 2.7 rather than Python 3.x. To install the most recent version, go to the Download Python page at
The website will show you a Download Python button that should be set for the operating system version you need. If it does not detect your operating system, there are links to the right versions lower on the page. Again, for the purposes of this book, accept all the defaults, and head back to chapter 8.
Each scenario chapter covers an operational area of a typical company. Chapters 3 and 4 (retention and support) deal with customers. Chapters 2 and 5 (purchase approval and invoice audit) deal with suppliers. And chapters 6 and chapters 7 deal with facilities management (power consumption forecasting).
Each scenario is divided into five steps that make it easy to run a complete application.
| Step 1 | Read the first part of the chapter to understand the problem you will solve. |
| Step 2 | Download a Jupyter notebook and a dataset. |
| Step 3 | Upload a Jupyter notebook and a dataset to your AWS SageMaker account. |
| Step 4 | Run the Jupyter notebook to see how it works. |
| Step 5 | Read the rest of the chapter to see why it works like it does. |