Using R and Python in Power BI

power bi language

The most disastrous thing that you can ever learn is your first programming language. ― Alan Kay

Why Bother with R and Python?

When I learned how to be a business intelligence analyst, I learned all about ETL, data warehousing, SQL databases, and then at the end Power BI, a product which promised to be able to do everything I had just learned in a single piece of software.

Power BI is impressive, having an elaborate ability to ingest data through Power Query, a data storage engine with the same code base as Microsoft’s Enterprise-grade Analysis Services, and a fancy set of visualizations for the front end.

So, if the base abilities are so great, why would you want, or need, to use programming languages like R and Python. Well, there are at least a few reasons.

There are times when you will need to do a more advanced analysis of your data beyond what Power BI can do.

Both R and Python are full programming languages with extensive capability for analyzing and manipulating data which can unlock more insights from your data.

While Power BI can connect to many data sources, there are a few that it lacks. R and Python are open source languages and as a result, have a plethora of packages and libraries which can be used to extend the language’s abilities.

Some of these packages include dealing with specific data sources and file types. They are also capable of some useful visuals.

Your organization may have existing solutions written in R or Python, and this code could easily be reused in Power BI. Or perhaps you are already an expert at R or Python.

Rather than learning the in and outs of Power Query, you could largely by-pass it with a language you are already familiar with and fast at.

Details, Details, Details

Before you can use R or Python in Power BI Desktop, you need to have the language, along with any packages you want to use, installed on your computer.

For R, the base installation is the minimum you need, but adding some extra packages, such as tidyverse, can help. For Python, you are required to install pandas and matplotlib at a minimum so that it can handle data frames and visuals.

Using the options menu in Power BI, you can select which version of the languages you want to use (if you have multiple versions installed), as well as an external editor, which will come in handy later.

For R, I recommend RStudio and Visual Studio Code for Python (Sublime is also a good editor).

R Script options in Power BI

Most of R’s packages are on the smaller side and are meant for a single purpose. Python’s libraries are often large and cover many different functions, although, for performance purposes, it is possible to only import the parts of the package you need.

In Power BI Desktop, you are only limited by the packages installed on your computer, in the Power BI Service, you are limited to what has been installed there. Here is a list of the R packages available in the Power BI Service, and Python libraries available.

The Road Ahead

In this post, I am going to walk through an example that covers the places in Power BI you can use R and Python. This example will use R to scrape a Titanic passenger list from the web.

Then use Python to create a Machine Learning model to predict whether a passenger will survive or not, and analyze the effectiveness of the model.

Get Data

The first place you can use these languages is to Get Data, where an R or Python script is listed under the “Other” category. Selecting this opens up a basic text editor where you can type or paste your script.

One of the only major limitations in what you can do here is that the script will time out after 30 minutes, so make sure whatever you are doing happens within that time.

Get Data Window in Power BI

The script I am running here scrapes a website for the passenger list from the Titanic and splits it into a training and a test set.

You may be asked to enable scripts at this point. Also, permissions for the data need to be set to public if you want to use the scripts in the Service.

R Scipt window in Power BI
    library(magrittr)
    library(rvest)
    library(xml2)

    SurviorsURL = "https://titanicfacts.net/titanic-survivors-list/"
    VictimsURL = "https://titanicfacts.net/titanic-deaths/"

    #Survivors
    survivorPage <- read_html(SurviorsURL, encoding = "utf8")
    survivors <- suppressWarnings(
          data.frame(surName = html_nodes(survivorPage, 'tr+ tr td:nth-child(1)') %>% 
                html_text(),
                firstName = html_nodes(survivorPage, 'tr+ tr td:nth-child(2)') %>% 
                html_text(),
                age = html_nodes(survivorPage, 'tr+ tr td:nth-child(3)') %>% html_text() %>% as.numeric(),
                borded = html_nodes(survivorPage, 'tr+ tr td:nth-child(4)') %>% html_text(),
                roomClass = html_nodes(survivorPage, 'tr+ tr td:nth-child(5)') %>% html_text(),
                person = "man",
                survived = 1,
                stringsAsFactors = FALSE)
    )

    #Victims
    victimsPage <- read_html(VictimsURL)
    victims <- suppressWarnings(
          data.frame(surName = html_nodes(victimsPage, 'tr+ tr td:nth-child(1)') %>% 
                html_text(),
                firstName = html_nodes(victimsPage, 'tr+ tr td:nth-child(2)') %>% 
                html_text(),
                age = html_nodes(victimsPage, 'tr+ tr td:nth-child(3)') %>% html_text() %>% as.numeric(),
                borded = html_nodes(victimsPage, 'tr+ tr td:nth-child(4)') %>% html_text(),
                roomClass = html_nodes(victimsPage, 'tr+ tr td:nth-child(5)') %>% html_text(),
                person = "man",
                survived = 0,
                stringsAsFactors = FALSE)
    )

    #Extracting gender from name prefix
    passengers <- rbind(survivors, victims)
    passengers$person[grep("^Mrs", passengers$firstName)] <- "woman"
    passengers$person[grep("^Mme", passengers$firstName)] <- "woman"
    passengers$person[grep("^Senora", passengers$firstName)] <- "woman"
    passengers$person[grep("^Mlle", passengers$firstName)] <- "woman"
    passengers$person[grep("^Dona", passengers$firstName)] <- "woman"
    passengers$person[grep("^Ms", passengers$firstName)] <- "woman"
    passengers$person[grep("Lady$", passengers$firstName)] <- "woman"
    passengers$person[grep("^Miss", passengers$firstName)] <- "woman"
    #passengers$person[grep("^Master", passengers$firstName)] <- "boy"

    #Assigning passengers to a test or training set
    set.seed(1337)
    passengers$id <- 1:nrow(passengers)
    train <- passengers %>% dplyr::sample_frac(0.75)
    test <- dplyr::anti_join(passengers, train, by = 'id')
    train$inTrain <- 1
    test$inTrain <- 0
    passengers <- rbind(train, test)

    passengers$age[is.na(passengers$age)] <- 0

Once the script has run, Power BI searches the environment for any data frames and then presents you with a screen where you can choose which one(s) you want.

Power BI Table Navigator in Power Query

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Transforming Data with R and Python

You can then add additional steps as you normally would in Power Query. Additional R and Python scripts are options as well.

Choosing these as applied step opens the editor again, with an initial command which loads the table as a data frame called “dataset”.

Below is some python code which is added as a second step after the R code collects the Titanic data. This code trains and tests a Random Forest machine learning model on the data.

from sklearn.ensemble import RandomForestClassifier

#Formatting data
dataset['bordedNum'] = pandas.Categorical(dataset['borded']).codes
dataset['roomClassNum'] = pandas.Categorical(dataset['roomClass']).codes
dataset['personNum'] = pandas.Categorical(dataset['person']).codes
dataset['prediction'] = 2

#Training the model
train = dataset.query('inTrain == 1')
rfc = RandomForestClassifier()
rfc.fit(train.loc[:, ['age', 'personNum', 'roomClassNum', 'bordedNum']], train.loc[:,'survived'])

#Testing the model
test = dataset.query('inTrain == 0')
pred = rfc.predict(test.loc[:, ['age', 'personNum', 'roomClassNum', 'bordedNum']])
test['prediction'] = pred

dataset = train.append(test)

One thing to keep in mind with script Applied Steps is the data size and free space on your hard drive.

Power BI will temporarily save copies of the data during the execution of the script steps to a temporary folder on your hard drive (The location of this folder can be changed in the options menu).

Putting all your transformations into one step can limit the amount of data deposited.

Visualize Data with R and Python

Once the data is loaded, we can then create visuals with R and Python. In the visuals panel, the icons for both an R and Python visuals. They work pretty much the same and here we will be using the Python visual.

Clicking the visual creates a blank visual on the canvas and brings up an editor at the bottom of the screen.

Python Script Editor

You will notice in the editor that there are a few lines of commented code which is automatically added. This code takes the data you added to the visual, puts it into a data frame, and then removes the duplicate rows.

If you do not want duplicate rows removed, make sure to add some sort of key column which will make each row unique.

Note, there is a limit of 150 thousand rows per visual and it needs to run in 5 min for in Power BI Desktop, and 1 min for the Service.

In the top bar, on the right side of the visual, there are several useful buttons. From left to right, they are a button to run the script and update the visual, open the options menu to select the script options you want, and the arrow opens an external editor.

Opening an external editor is made easy because as it opens the editor (such as Rstudio or VS Code), it exports the data set as a CSV file, and adds the necessary code to the editor to read in the CSV file.

You can then play around until you have a visual you like in the editor, and copy and paste the code back into Power BI.

For the Titanic example, here is some code that will create a ROC curve visual, which will show us how well our model worked at predicting who lived and died on the Titanic.

from sklearn.metrics import roc_curve, auc

import scikitplot as skplt
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

#Calculating statistics
fpr, tpr, threshold = roc_curve(dataset.loc[:, 'survived'], dataset.loc[:, 'prediction'])
roc_auc = auc(fpr, tpr)

#Creating visual
plt.figure()
lw = 2
plt.plot(fpr, tpr, 'b', label = 'AUC = %0.2f' % roc_auc)
plt.plot([0, 1], [0, 1], color='navy', lw=lw, linestyle='--')
plt.xlim([0.0, 1.0])
plt.ylim([0.0, 1.05])
plt.xlabel('False Positive Rate')
plt.ylabel('True Positive Rate')
plt.title('Receiver operating characteristic example')
plt.legend(loc="lower right")
plt.show()
Receiver Operating Characteristic Curve made using R code

Conclusion

In this post, I’ve covered how to use the R and Python languages in Power BI to get and transform data and create visualizations. I did this through an example of doing some machine learning using a Titanic data set to create a model that predicts which passenger lived or died.

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12 Comments

  • can I check where does the Python gets its “dataset” parameter from?

    Reply
    • Hey Tan, thanks for you comment.
      The “dataset” is automatically made by Power BI. For an applied step in Power Query, the dataset is just the data from the previous applied step loaded into a data frame. It also adds this comment line to the top of the editor: “# ‘dataset’ holds the input data for this script”
      Cheers,
      Stephen

      Reply
      • I am sorry that I still do not get things correct. Let me know if my below steps are correct.
        (1) Get Data -> Other -> R script … this is OK, can get passengers, train & test into PBI.
        (2) Python visual -> Passenger’s id as Values, see https://imgur.com/BRE9ZiJ
        (3) This step I am confused. Do I continue in Python visual or in Python Script? I try both, but not successful.
        (3a) See https://imgur.com/Pu9kVPL do I need to uncomment for dataset?
        (3b) See https://imgur.com/KfK0SV8 and after click OK, it gives https://imgur.com/JsK1OZL

        Reply
        • Hey Tan,
          Hopefully this helps you.
          – 3 – Building the model is done as a python script in Power Query.
          – 3a – You don’t need to uncomment any of the lines Power BI adds.
          – 3b – Not sure why that error is there. A couple of things to check. Have you installed the sklearn library? Is the script running as an applied step in the same query as the R script?
          – For the visual, add the survived, predicted, and key columns.
          Cheers,
          Stephen

          Reply
  • Thanks for your kind replies and patience…I am sure my sklearn library is properly installed, as I can run the below 4 lines in Spyder with no issues.
    from sklearn.ensemble import RandomForestClassifier
    from sklearn.metrics import roc_curve, auc
    import scikitplot as skplt
    import matplotlib.pyplot as pl
    Do we need to create this https://imgur.com/BRE9ZiJ first before building the model in Python script? I still do not understand that dataset = pandas.DataFrame(id). Which id does it gets from? Is it from passengers, test or train? what does that dataset contains? it is just a dataframe of id?
    How does that dataset link to the next Python script we are running?

    For the first part of Python script, as seen here, https://imgur.com/mNxA3Jf, do we place the mouse cursor on the passengers, test or train?
    Continuing on the passengers seems able to let the Python code runs, but not for test or train.
    https://i.imgur.com/IoNzRgo.png
    https://i.imgur.com/tIm31re.png
    https://i.imgur.com/qJq7ae7.png

    Continuing the second part of the Python script based on the passengers dataset gives an error as shown:
    https://i.imgur.com/QFyJA3N.png

    If you are able to printscreen its steps by steps to follow, that would be great.
    Thank You

    Reply
    • Hello,
      I hope this address some of your questions.
      – The visual comes after creating the model. It uses the data created by running the model.
      – ‘dataset = pandas.DataFrame(id)’ – id comes from whatever fields you add to the visual. It is just a pandas dataframe containing the fields listed.
      – The first python script is run in the passengers query after the R script. The second is run in the visual, not Power Query, which should solve the error.
      Cheers,
      Stephen

      Reply
    • Hey,
      Thank you for going through this blog. I think I will be making some updates in the future to clear it up a bit.
      For the final visual, I did use all three columns (Id, survived, prediction), they just did not get into the screenshot.
      In the model building code, I set prediction = 2 as a default value so I could filter it out later. So in the visual, try filtering prediction for 0 and 1, so the training data is excluded. This should make it look like mine.
      Cheers,
      Stephen

      Reply
  • Hmm it appears like your blog ate my first comment (it
    was extremely long) so I guess I’ll just sum it up what I wrote and say, I’m thoroughly enjoying your blog.

    I as well am an aspiring blog writer but I’m still new to the whole thing.
    Do you have any helpful hints for novice blog writers? I’d
    really appreciate it.

    Reply

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Stephen is an Analytics Consultant with Iteration Insights. Stephen blends his doctoral background in Computational Chemistry with his inquisitive approach to Data Analytics. Some of the tools Stephen likes to work with are Power BI/DAX, SQL, R, and Python. Behind the scenes, Stephen is making waves in the analytics space by sharing his knowledge and speaking at local, national, and international events like the Dynamic Communities North America Summit.

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