title: "Numpy" TypeError: data type "string" not understood
body: <p>I am a newbie trying to learn data visuallizaion using python. 
  Actually, I was just trying to follow the example given by a <a href="https://www.google.co.jp/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=1&amp;cad=rja&amp;uact=8&amp;ved=0ahUKEwiQ9-Tql8TTAhWMS7wKHScaDNMQFggnMAA&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.packtpub.com%2Fbig-data-and-business-intelligence%2Fpython-data-visualization-cookbook&amp;usg=AFQjCNGjCjLxC_4zj4rGMbqhchOmgNau_Q&amp;sig2=X-Whi7ng1FamajPtAvo6ng" rel="nofollow noreferrer">cookbook</a>,
  like: </p>
  
  <pre><code>import numpy
  import os
  os.chdir("Home/Desktop/Temporal_folder")
  data = numpy.loadtxt ('ch02-data.csv', dtype= 'string', delimiter=',')
  print (data)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>but somehow it did not work out:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "Home/PycharmProjects/Learning/Datavisuallization.py", line 5, in &lt;module&gt;
      data = numpy.loadtxt ('ch02-data.csv', dtype= 'string', delimiter=',')
    File "Home/anaconda/lib/python3.6/site-packages/numpy/lib/npyio.py", line 930, in loadtxt
      dtype = np.dtype(dtype)
  TypeError: data type "string" not understood
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>this is the data I used: <a href="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/axolote/IPython_StudyNotebooks/master/python_dataviz_cookbook/ch2files/ch02-data.csv" rel="nofollow noreferrer">"ch02-data.csv"</a></p>
  
  <p>there were some similar issues <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/25766831/numpy-structured-arrays-string-type-not-understood-when-specifying-dtype-with-a">posted</a>, but I am not sure I understood what the answer tried to explain. 
  Also, I checked the <a href="https://docs.scipy.org/doc/numpy/reference/generated/numpy.loadtxt.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">manual of numpy.loadtext()</a>, still the answer does not seem to be obvious to me... 
  any suggestion? 
  <a href="https://docs.scipy.org/doc/numpy/reference/generated/numpy.loadtxt.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://docs.scipy.org/doc/numpy/reference/generated/numpy.loadtxt.html</a></p>