VM image for data science projects
There is another choice which popular recently: docker(https://www.docker.com). Docker is a container and let you create/maintain a working environment very easily and fast. 


install essential tools for data science in python 

https://registry.hub.docker.com/u/ceshine/python-datascience/

use r language to do data science

https://github.com/rocker-org/rocker



Hope that would help you.