hongchaopan/rossman_sales_analysis

CS109 Group Project Fall 2016

Predicting Rossmann Sales

Where to find things:

If you are a student and want to see our project summary visit Predict Rossmann Sales

If you want to learn how the site was built, visit GitHub using gh-pages, we use automate page generator to create a static page.

Project Dependencies and non-standard libraries

Visualization

Tableau/Matplotlib was used to prepare some of the visualizations. The results were then imported into iPython via embedding into %%html cells.

Libraries Used

We use a number of different libraries besides the typical ones from class (pandas, numpy, sklearn, statsmodels)

Xgboost was used for main models/experiments with parallel programming.

File Organizations

• /data/: used to contain Kaggle raw data, removed due to memory usage
• /docs/: website contents
• /images/: images generated from IPython Notebook and used in website
• /kaggle_submission/: predictions of Kaggle test data
• /scripts/: utility functions
• /styles/: website style
• EDA.ipynb and EDA_summary.doc: Milestone 3, exporatory data analysis
• Model_summary.doc and model.ipynb: Milestone 4 and 5, baseline models and future works

Git Notes

In the CS109, we have using git in a non-traditional role. Usually branches live only to deliver some well defined piece of functionality and then are merged back into the master branch.

Since we will be working concurrently on multiple parts of this project, git will be very useful tool to ensure that we can work in parallel, even on the same code, without interference.

Here are some notes to get you started.

Copy this repository to your machine

git clone [email protected]:weiyialanchen/rossmann_sales_analysis.git

Creating a branch

This will create a new branch in the code. You can do anything you want in this branch and it will not affect anything in master, until a merge is done (see below).

cd rossmann_sales_analysis
git checkout -b newbranch
git push origin newbranch
git push --set-upstream origin newbranch

The push origin is needed to send the branch to github, which you will need to do before pushing the branch so everyone else can see it.

From this point do whatever edits you want. Create a subdirectory, add files, make changes.

Commit early and regularly

Do not leave your code unbackedup on your machine. I commit every time I add something new and useful that works. It could be as little as 2-3 lines of code.

This is the same as in class, although now you will be committing just to your branch.

Assuming you are in the cs109-groupproj-college directory

git add .
git commit -m "<one line summary of what changed>"
git push

See what others have done

To grab a fresh local copy of everything in the github repository, use git fetch. Any new branches anyone else has created will be moved down.

To switch to their branch, while leaving yours untouched use git checkout otherbranch. To get back to your branch git checkout mybranch.

Merging - Step 1

The first step in merging is to merge the latest master branch into your branch

git fetch
git merge origin/master

If there are any conflicts, like two people having written to the same file in the same place, it will let you know. It is pretty smart about merging different pieces of code or file that do not impact each other. This is one of git's most amazing features.

After you have reconciled any merge conflicts, you can commit the merged master into your branch, which are the same commands as before

git add .  
git commit -m "I merged in master"  
git push  

Now your branch has all of master and all of your new stuff

Merging - Step 2

Now that you are fully up to date in your branch, you can update master:

git checkout master  
git merge newbranch    
git status    
git push  

Now your code has been integrated into master. Your work is done.

Create a new branch to start on another unit of work (or keep working on the same branch if it isn't done yet).

It is a good idea to not wait too long to merge into master. Once it is in a stable state, ready to use by others if not feature complete, do the merge into master.

When Two People Work on the Same Branch

If two of you are working on the same branch (which I don't particularly advise), you have to do a few extra steps to keep each other in sync. Otherwise one of you will make a change, push the change, while another person makes a change. Then git complains about not being able to reconcile the two changes and the commits are out of sync.

So before pushing your code, merge in the latest copy of the origin branch from github:

git fetch
git merge origin/mybranch

If there are no conflicts, you can proceed. Otherwise, you have to manually fix the conflicts first.

Then, as before:

git add .
git commit -m "added cool gizmo 45"
git push

Bottom line: fetch and merge from the origin branch before making your commits and pushes.

That's It

git has many powerful features like pull requests and code reviews, but I don't think we need them for this project.