Recommended Method: Install Python Using Anaconda

This method of installing Python is highly recommended for our students.

If you are interested in learning Python for data science, we strongly recommend installing Anaconda, even if you already have Python installed on your computer. You should install Python 3.6 for courses at Udacity. Having a dual environment with two different versions of Python can be useful, but content across all of our courses, and most professional environments, has now been converted to the newest version of Python.

Anaconda includes a great distribution of libraries and software built for data science, some of which are otherwise difficult to install. It also makes it really easy to set up different environments on your computer so you can quickly switch between different versions of Python and packages! For example, if one project you're working on requires Python 2.7 and another requires Python 3.6, as well as different dependencies, then Anaconda's environment management can help.

If you would like to know more about the Anaconda environment, you can check out the free course here .

To test if you can now run Anaconda, enter conda --version in your terminal. This should print the version number of your installation. However, if you get a command not found message, you probably need to add Anaconda and Python to your PATH.

If you are a Windows user using Git Bash, there are instructions on the next page to do this.