can't use scikit-learn - “AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute …”

Question

I\'m trying to follow this tutorial of scikit-learn (linear regression).

I\'ve installed scikit through pip install -U scikit-learn, I use python 2.7 an

Answer 1

Another cause of this problem (not the problem with the OP's code) - but the one that got me - is that python does not automatically import subpackages or modules unless that is explicitly done by the package developer. And sklearn does not automatically import its subpackages, so if you have

import sklearn 
diabetes = sklearn.datasets.load_diabetes()

then you will get

AttributeError: module 'sklearn' has no attribute 'datasets'

This is a highly misleading error message, because sklearn does have a subpackage called datasets - you just need to import it explicitly

import sklearn.datasets 
diabetes = sklearn.datasets.load_diabetes()