**Why Each Library:** Pandas—tabular ETL, missing data, time series; built on NumPy. NumPy—vectorized math, arrays; C-speed. Matplotlib—viz; use seaborn for stats plots.
**Scalability Limits:** Pandas holds data in memory—~1M rows comfortably; 10M+ consider chunking, Dask, or Spark. NumPy scales to hundreds of MB for arrays. Matplotlib is single-process—use Datashader or plotly for big data viz.
**Cost Trade-off:** Pandas on single node = cheap, fast for small data....
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