Installing Python and Anaconda on Windows

This tutorial will show you how to install Python (via Anaconda) on your machine.

Before getting started with the installation, let’s learn a bit more about what Anaconda exactly is. Python is the programming language which will be installed on the machine and on top of that different IDEs and packages can be installed. Python on it’s own is not going to be very useful unless an IDE is installed. This is where Anaconda comes in the picture.

Anaconda installs IDEs and several important packages like NumPy, Pandas, and so on, and this is a really convenient package which can be downloaded and installed.

Step 1: You can download the the installer from here or from the link below.

Downloads - Anaconda

Step 2: Select the operating system you are on.

Step 3: From the Python 3.6 section, choose from 32bit / 64bit options.

The download should start after this. It’s a pretty large file, so it might take some time to download.

Step 4: Go through the installation procedure with the installer.

Step 5: After the installation is complete, search for Anaconda Navigator in the Start menu. You’ll see something which looks like this(it might change in the future updates).

Anaconda Navigator Homepage(your screen might slightly defer in case of a newer version)

Here you’ll find several applications, out of which Spyder (find the documentation here) will be widely used as the IDE for writing and running our code.

Updating Anaconda

1. Open your Anaconda Prompt from the Start menu.
2. Navigate to the anaconda directory.
3. Run conda update conda

Congratulations!! You’ve successfully installed Anaconda and now you’re ready to move on to getting started with machine learning!!

Have an awesome day :)