.. currentmodule:: pandas

.. ipython:: python
   :suppress:

   import numpy as np
   from pandas import *
   randn = np.random.randn
   np.set_printoptions(precision=4, suppress=True)
   from pandas.compat import lrange
   options.display.max_rows=15

Essential Basic Functionality

Here we discuss a lot of the essential functionality common to the pandas data structures. Here's how to create some of the objects used in the examples from the previous section:

.. ipython:: python

   index = date_range('1/1/2000', periods=8)
   s = Series(randn(5), index=['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e'])
   df = DataFrame(randn(8, 3), index=index,
                  columns=['A', 'B', 'C'])
   wp = Panel(randn(2, 5, 4), items=['Item1', 'Item2'],
              major_axis=date_range('1/1/2000', periods=5),
              minor_axis=['A', 'B', 'C', 'D'])

Head and Tail

To view a small sample of a Series or DataFrame object, use the head and tail methods. The default number of elements to display is five, but you may pass a custom number.

.. ipython:: python

   long_series = Series(randn(1000))
   long_series.head()
   long_series.tail(3)

Attributes and the raw ndarray(s)

pandas objects have a number of attributes enabling you to access the metadata

shape: gives the axis dimensions of the object, consistent with ndarray

Axis labels

Series: index (only axis)

DataFrame: index (rows) and columns

Panel: items, major_axis, and minor_axis

Note, these attributes can be safely assigned to!

.. ipython:: python

   df[:2]
   df.columns = [x.lower() for x in df.columns]
   df

To get the actual data inside a data structure, one need only access the values property:

.. ipython:: python

    s.values
    df.values
    wp.values

If a DataFrame or Panel contains homogeneously-typed data, the ndarray can actually be modified in-place, and the changes will be reflected in the data structure. For heterogeneous data (e.g. some of the DataFrame's columns are not all the same dtype), this will not be the case. The values attribute itself, unlike the axis labels, cannot be assigned to.

Note

When working with heterogeneous data, the dtype of the resulting ndarray will be chosen to accommodate all of the data involved. For example, if strings are involved, the result will be of object dtype. If there are only floats and integers, the resulting array will be of float dtype.

Accelerated operations

Pandas has support for accelerating certain types of binary numerical and boolean operations using the numexpr library (starting in 0.11.0) and the bottleneck libraries.

These libraries are especially useful when dealing with large data sets, and provide large speedups. numexpr uses smart chunking, caching, and multiple cores. bottleneck is a set of specialized cython routines that are especially fast when dealing with arrays that have nans.

Here is a sample (using 100 column x 100,000 row DataFrames):

Operation	0.11.0 (ms)	Prior Vern (ms)	Ratio to Prior
`df1 > df2`	13.32	125.35	0.1063
`df1 * df2`	21.71	36.63	0.5928
`df1 + df2`	22.04	36.50	0.6039

You are highly encouraged to install both libraries. See the section :ref:`Recommended Dependencies <install.recommended_dependencies>` for more installation info.

Flexible binary operations

With binary operations between pandas data structures, there are two key points of interest:

Broadcasting behavior between higher- (e.g. DataFrame) and lower-dimensional (e.g. Series) objects.

Missing data in computations

We will demonstrate how to manage these issues independently, though they can be handled simultaneously.

Matching / broadcasting behavior

DataFrame has the methods add, sub, mul, div and related functions radd, rsub, ... for carrying out binary operations. For broadcasting behavior, Series input is of primary interest. Using these functions, you can use to either match on the index or columns via the axis keyword:

.. ipython:: python

   d = {'one' : Series(randn(3), index=['a', 'b', 'c']),
        'two' : Series(randn(4), index=['a', 'b', 'c', 'd']),
        'three' : Series(randn(3), index=['b', 'c', 'd'])}
   df = df_orig = DataFrame(d)
   df
   row = df.ix[1]
   column = df['two']

   df.sub(row, axis='columns')
   df.sub(row, axis=1)

   df.sub(column, axis='index')
   df.sub(column, axis=0)

With Panel, describing the matching behavior is a bit more difficult, so the arithmetic methods instead (and perhaps confusingly?) give you the option to specify the broadcast axis. For example, suppose we wished to demean the data over a particular axis. This can be accomplished by taking the mean over an axis and broadcasting over the same axis:

.. ipython:: python

   major_mean = wp.mean(axis='major')
   major_mean
   wp.sub(major_mean, axis='major')

And similarly for axis="items" and axis="minor".

Note

I could be convinced to make the axis argument in the DataFrame methods match the broadcasting behavior of Panel. Though it would require a transition period so users can change their code...

Missing data / operations with fill values

In Series and DataFrame (though not yet in Panel), the arithmetic functions have the option of inputting a fill_value, namely a value to substitute when at most one of the values at a location are missing. For example, when adding two DataFrame objects, you may wish to treat NaN as 0 unless both DataFrames are missing that value, in which case the result will be NaN (you can later replace NaN with some other value using fillna if you wish).

.. ipython:: python
   :suppress:

   df2 = df.copy()
   df2['three']['a'] = 1.

.. ipython:: python

   df
   df2
   df + df2
   df.add(df2, fill_value=0)

Flexible Comparisons

Starting in v0.8, pandas introduced binary comparison methods eq, ne, lt, gt, le, and ge to Series and DataFrame whose behavior is analogous to the binary arithmetic operations described above:

.. ipython:: python

   df.gt(df2)
   df2.ne(df)

These operations produce a pandas object the same type as the left-hand-side input that if of dtype bool. These boolean objects can be used in indexing operations, see :ref:`here<indexing.boolean>`

Boolean Reductions

You can apply the reductions: empty, any(), all(), and bool() to provide a way to summarize a boolean result.

.. ipython:: python

   (df>0).all()
   (df>0).any()

You can reduce to a final boolean value.

.. ipython:: python

   (df>0).any().any()

You can test if a pandas object is empty, via the empty property.

.. ipython:: python

   df.empty
   DataFrame(columns=list('ABC')).empty

To evaluate single-element pandas objects in a boolean context, use the method .bool():

.. ipython:: python

   Series([True]).bool()
   Series([False]).bool()
   DataFrame([[True]]).bool()
   DataFrame([[False]]).bool()

Warning

You might be tempted to do the following:

>>>if df:
     ...

Or

>>> df and df2

These both will raise as you are trying to compare multiple values.

ValueError: The truth value of an array is ambiguous. Use a.empty, a.any() or a.all().

See :ref:`gotchas<gotchas.truth>` for a more detailed discussion.

Combining overlapping data sets

A problem occasionally arising is the combination of two similar data sets where values in one are preferred over the other. An example would be two data series representing a particular economic indicator where one is considered to be of "higher quality". However, the lower quality series might extend further back in history or have more complete data coverage. As such, we would like to combine two DataFrame objects where missing values in one DataFrame are conditionally filled with like-labeled values from the other DataFrame. The function implementing this operation is combine_first, which we illustrate:

.. ipython:: python

   df1 = DataFrame({'A' : [1., np.nan, 3., 5., np.nan],
                    'B' : [np.nan, 2., 3., np.nan, 6.]})
   df2 = DataFrame({'A' : [5., 2., 4., np.nan, 3., 7.],
                    'B' : [np.nan, np.nan, 3., 4., 6., 8.]})
   df1
   df2
   df1.combine_first(df2)

General DataFrame Combine

The combine_first method above calls the more general DataFrame method combine. This method takes another DataFrame and a combiner function, aligns the input DataFrame and then passes the combiner function pairs of Series (ie, columns whose names are the same).

So, for instance, to reproduce combine_first as above:

.. ipython:: python

   combiner = lambda x, y: np.where(isnull(x), y, x)
   df1.combine(df2, combiner)

Descriptive statistics

A large number of methods for computing descriptive statistics and other related operations on :ref:`Series <api.series.stats>`, :ref:`DataFrame <api.dataframe.stats>`, and :ref:`Panel <api.panel.stats>`. Most of these are aggregations (hence producing a lower-dimensional result) like sum, mean, and quantile, but some of them, like cumsum and cumprod, produce an object of the same size. Generally speaking, these methods take an axis argument, just like ndarray.{sum, std, ...}, but the axis can be specified by name or integer:

Series: no axis argument needed

DataFrame: "index" (axis=0, default), "columns" (axis=1)

Panel: "items" (axis=0), "major" (axis=1, default), "minor" (axis=2)

For example:

.. ipython:: python

   df
   df.mean(0)
   df.mean(1)

All such methods have a skipna option signaling whether to exclude missing data (True by default):

.. ipython:: python

   df.sum(0, skipna=False)
   df.sum(axis=1, skipna=True)

Combined with the broadcasting / arithmetic behavior, one can describe various statistical procedures, like standardization (rendering data zero mean and standard deviation 1), very concisely:

.. ipython:: python

   ts_stand = (df - df.mean()) / df.std()
   ts_stand.std()
   xs_stand = df.sub(df.mean(1), axis=0).div(df.std(1), axis=0)
   xs_stand.std(1)

Note that methods like cumsum and cumprod preserve the location of NA values:

.. ipython:: python

   df.cumsum()

Here is a quick reference summary table of common functions. Each also takes an optional level parameter which applies only if the object has a :ref:`hierarchical index<indexing.hierarchical>`.

Function	Description
`count`	Number of non-null observations
`sum`	Sum of values
`mean`	Mean of values
`mad`	Mean absolute deviation
`median`	Arithmetic median of values
`min`	Minimum
`max`	Maximum
`mode`	Mode
`abs`	Absolute Value
`prod`	Product of values
`std`	Unbiased standard deviation
`var`	Unbiased variance
`skew`	Unbiased skewness (3rd moment)
`kurt`	Unbiased kurtosis (4th moment)
`quantile`	Sample quantile (value at %)
`cumsum`	Cumulative sum
`cumprod`	Cumulative product
`cummax`	Cumulative maximum
`cummin`	Cumulative minimum

Note that by chance some NumPy methods, like mean, std, and sum, will exclude NAs on Series input by default:

.. ipython:: python

   np.mean(df['one'])
   np.mean(df['one'].values)

Series also has a method nunique which will return the number of unique non-null values:

.. ipython:: python

   series = Series(randn(500))
   series[20:500] = np.nan
   series[10:20]  = 5
   series.nunique()

Summarizing data: describe

There is a convenient describe function which computes a variety of summary statistics about a Series or the columns of a DataFrame (excluding NAs of course):

.. ipython:: python

    series = Series(randn(1000))
    series[::2] = np.nan
    series.describe()
    frame = DataFrame(randn(1000, 5), columns=['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e'])
    frame.ix[::2] = np.nan
    frame.describe()

For a non-numerical Series object, describe will give a simple summary of the number of unique values and most frequently occurring values:

.. ipython:: python

   s = Series(['a', 'a', 'b', 'b', 'a', 'a', np.nan, 'c', 'd', 'a'])
   s.describe()

There also is a utility function, value_range which takes a DataFrame and returns a series with the minimum/maximum values in the DataFrame.

Index of Min/Max Values

The idxmin and idxmax functions on Series and DataFrame compute the index labels with the minimum and maximum corresponding values:

.. ipython:: python

   s1 = Series(randn(5))
   s1
   s1.idxmin(), s1.idxmax()

   df1 = DataFrame(randn(5,3), columns=['A','B','C'])
   df1
   df1.idxmin(axis=0)
   df1.idxmax(axis=1)

When there are multiple rows (or columns) matching the minimum or maximum value, idxmin and idxmax return the first matching index:

.. ipython:: python

   df3 = DataFrame([2, 1, 1, 3, np.nan], columns=['A'], index=list('edcba'))
   df3
   df3['A'].idxmin()

Note

idxmin and idxmax are called argmin and argmax in NumPy.

Value counts (histogramming) / Mode

The value_counts Series method and top-level function computes a histogram of a 1D array of values. It can also be used as a function on regular arrays:

.. ipython:: python

   data = np.random.randint(0, 7, size=50)
   data
   s = Series(data)
   s.value_counts()
   value_counts(data)

Similarly, you can get the most frequently occuring value(s) (the mode) of the values in a Series or DataFrame:

.. ipython:: python

    s5 = Series([1, 1, 3, 3, 3, 5, 5, 7, 7, 7])
    s5.mode()
    df5 = DataFrame({"A": np.random.randint(0, 7, size=50),
                     "B": np.random.randint(-10, 15, size=50)})
    df5.mode()

Discretization and quantiling

Continuous values can be discretized using the cut (bins based on values) and qcut (bins based on sample quantiles) functions:

.. ipython:: python

   arr = np.random.randn(20)
   factor = cut(arr, 4)
   factor

   factor = cut(arr, [-5, -1, 0, 1, 5])
   factor

qcut computes sample quantiles. For example, we could slice up some normally distributed data into equal-size quartiles like so:

.. ipython:: python

   arr = np.random.randn(30)
   factor = qcut(arr, [0, .25, .5, .75, 1])
   factor
   value_counts(factor)

We can also pass infinite values to define the bins:

.. ipython:: python

   arr = np.random.randn(20)
   factor = cut(arr, [-np.inf, 0, np.inf])
   factor

Function application

Arbitrary functions can be applied along the axes of a DataFrame or Panel using the apply method, which, like the descriptive statistics methods, take an optional axis argument:

.. ipython:: python

   df.apply(np.mean)
   df.apply(np.mean, axis=1)
   df.apply(lambda x: x.max() - x.min())
   df.apply(np.cumsum)
   df.apply(np.exp)

Depending on the return type of the function passed to apply, the result will either be of lower dimension or the same dimension.

apply combined with some cleverness can be used to answer many questions about a data set. For example, suppose we wanted to extract the date where the maximum value for each column occurred:

.. ipython:: python

   tsdf = DataFrame(randn(1000, 3), columns=['A', 'B', 'C'],
                    index=date_range('1/1/2000', periods=1000))
   tsdf.apply(lambda x: x.idxmax())

You may also pass additional arguments and keyword arguments to the apply method. For instance, consider the following function you would like to apply:

def subtract_and_divide(x, sub, divide=1):
    return (x - sub) / divide

You may then apply this function as follows:

df.apply(subtract_and_divide, args=(5,), divide=3)

Another useful feature is the ability to pass Series methods to carry out some Series operation on each column or row:

.. ipython:: python
   :suppress:

   tsdf = DataFrame(randn(10, 3), columns=['A', 'B', 'C'],
                    index=date_range('1/1/2000', periods=10))
   tsdf.values[3:7] = np.nan

.. ipython:: python

   tsdf
   tsdf.apply(Series.interpolate)

Finally, apply takes an argument raw which is False by default, which converts each row or column into a Series before applying the function. When set to True, the passed function will instead receive an ndarray object, which has positive performance implications if you do not need the indexing functionality.

.. seealso::

   The section on :ref:`GroupBy <groupby>` demonstrates related, flexible
   functionality for grouping by some criterion, applying, and combining the
   results into a Series, DataFrame, etc.

Applying elementwise Python functions

Since not all functions can be vectorized (accept NumPy arrays and return another array or value), the methods applymap on DataFrame and analogously map on Series accept any Python function taking a single value and returning a single value. For example:

.. ipython:: python
   :suppress:

   df4 = df_orig.copy()

.. ipython:: python

   df4
   f = lambda x: len(str(x))
   df4['one'].map(f)
   df4.applymap(f)

Series.map has an additional feature which is that it can be used to easily "link" or "map" values defined by a secondary series. This is closely related to :ref:`merging/joining functionality <merging>`:

.. ipython:: python

   s = Series(['six', 'seven', 'six', 'seven', 'six'],
              index=['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e'])
   t = Series({'six' : 6., 'seven' : 7.})
   s
   s.map(t)

Reindexing and altering labels

reindex is the fundamental data alignment method in pandas. It is used to implement nearly all other features relying on label-alignment functionality. To reindex means to conform the data to match a given set of labels along a particular axis. This accomplishes several things:

Reorders the existing data to match a new set of labels

Inserts missing value (NA) markers in label locations where no data for that label existed

If specified, fill data for missing labels using logic (highly relevant to working with time series data)

Here is a simple example:

.. ipython:: python

   s = Series(randn(5), index=['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e'])
   s
   s.reindex(['e', 'b', 'f', 'd'])

Here, the f label was not contained in the Series and hence appears as NaN in the result.

With a DataFrame, you can simultaneously reindex the index and columns:

.. ipython:: python

   df
   df.reindex(index=['c', 'f', 'b'], columns=['three', 'two', 'one'])

For convenience, you may utilize the reindex_axis method, which takes the labels and a keyword axis parameter.

Note that the Index objects containing the actual axis labels can be shared between objects. So if we have a Series and a DataFrame, the following can be done:

.. ipython:: python

   rs = s.reindex(df.index)
   rs
   rs.index is df.index

This means that the reindexed Series's index is the same Python object as the DataFrame's index.

.. seealso::

   :ref:`Advanced indexing <indexing.advanced>` is an even more concise way of
   doing reindexing.

Note

When writing performance-sensitive code, there is a good reason to spend some time becoming a reindexing ninja: many operations are faster on pre-aligned data. Adding two unaligned DataFrames internally triggers a reindexing step. For exploratory analysis you will hardly notice the difference (because reindex has been heavily optimized), but when CPU cycles matter sprinking a few explicit reindex calls here and there can have an impact.

Reindexing to align with another object

You may wish to take an object and reindex its axes to be labeled the same as another object. While the syntax for this is straightforward albeit verbose, it is a common enough operation that the reindex_like method is available to make this simpler:

.. ipython:: python
   :suppress:

   df2 = df.reindex(['a', 'b', 'c'], columns=['one', 'two'])
   df3 = df2 - df2.mean()

.. ipython:: python

   df2
   df3
   df.reindex_like(df2)

Reindexing with `reindex_axis`

Aligning objects with each other with `align`

The align method is the fastest way to simultaneously align two objects. It supports a join argument (related to :ref:`joining and merging <merging>`):

join='outer': take the union of the indexes

join='left': use the calling object's index

join='right': use the passed object's index

join='inner': intersect the indexes

It returns a tuple with both of the reindexed Series:

.. ipython:: python

   s = Series(randn(5), index=['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e'])
   s1 = s[:4]
   s2 = s[1:]
   s1.align(s2)
   s1.align(s2, join='inner')
   s1.align(s2, join='left')

For DataFrames, the join method will be applied to both the index and the columns by default:

.. ipython:: python

   df.align(df2, join='inner')

You can also pass an axis option to only align on the specified axis:

.. ipython:: python

   df.align(df2, join='inner', axis=0)

If you pass a Series to DataFrame.align, you can choose to align both objects either on the DataFrame's index or columns using the axis argument:

.. ipython:: python

   df.align(df2.ix[0], axis=1)

Filling while reindexing

reindex takes an optional parameter method which is a filling method chosen from the following table:

Method	Action
pad / ffill	Fill values forward
bfill / backfill	Fill values backward

Other fill methods could be added, of course, but these are the two most commonly used for time series data. In a way they only make sense for time series or otherwise ordered data, but you may have an application on non-time series data where this sort of "interpolation" logic is the correct thing to do. More sophisticated interpolation of missing values would be an obvious extension.

We illustrate these fill methods on a simple TimeSeries:

.. ipython:: python

   rng = date_range('1/3/2000', periods=8)
   ts = Series(randn(8), index=rng)
   ts2 = ts[[0, 3, 6]]
   ts
   ts2

   ts2.reindex(ts.index)
   ts2.reindex(ts.index, method='ffill')
   ts2.reindex(ts.index, method='bfill')

Note these methods require that the indexes are order increasing.

Note the same result could have been achieved using :ref:`fillna <missing_data.fillna>`:

.. ipython:: python

   ts2.reindex(ts.index).fillna(method='ffill')

Note that reindex will raise a ValueError if the index is not monotonic. fillna will not make any checks on the order of the index.

Dropping labels from an axis

A method closely related to reindex is the drop function. It removes a set of labels from an axis:

.. ipython:: python

   df
   df.drop(['a', 'd'], axis=0)
   df.drop(['one'], axis=1)

Note that the following also works, but is a bit less obvious / clean:

.. ipython:: python

   df.reindex(df.index - ['a', 'd'])

Renaming / mapping labels

The rename method allows you to relabel an axis based on some mapping (a dict or Series) or an arbitrary function.

.. ipython:: python

   s
   s.rename(str.upper)

If you pass a function, it must return a value when called with any of the labels (and must produce a set of unique values). But if you pass a dict or Series, it need only contain a subset of the labels as keys:

.. ipython:: python

   df.rename(columns={'one' : 'foo', 'two' : 'bar'},
             index={'a' : 'apple', 'b' : 'banana', 'd' : 'durian'})

The rename method also provides an inplace named parameter that is by default False and copies the underlying data. Pass inplace=True to rename the data in place.

The Panel class has a related rename_axis class which can rename any of its three axes.

Iteration

Because Series is array-like, basic iteration produces the values. Other data structures follow the dict-like convention of iterating over the "keys" of the objects. In short:

Series: values

DataFrame: column labels

Panel: item labels

Thus, for example:

.. ipython::

   In [0]: for col in df:
      ...:     print(col)
      ...:

iteritems

Consistent with the dict-like interface, iteritems iterates through key-value pairs:

Series: (index, scalar value) pairs

DataFrame: (column, Series) pairs

Panel: (item, DataFrame) pairs

For example:

.. ipython::

   In [0]: for item, frame in wp.iteritems():
      ...:     print(item)
      ...:     print(frame)
      ...:

iterrows

New in v0.7 is the ability to iterate efficiently through rows of a DataFrame. It returns an iterator yielding each index value along with a Series containing the data in each row:

.. ipython::

   In [0]: for row_index, row in df2.iterrows():
      ...:     print('%s\n%s' % (row_index, row))
      ...:

For instance, a contrived way to transpose the dataframe would be:

.. ipython:: python

   df2 = DataFrame({'x': [1, 2, 3], 'y': [4, 5, 6]})
   print(df2)
   print(df2.T)

   df2_t = DataFrame(dict((idx,values) for idx, values in df2.iterrows()))
   print(df2_t)

Note

iterrows does not preserve dtypes across the rows (dtypes are preserved across columns for DataFrames). For example,

.. ipython:: python

  df_iter = DataFrame([[1, 1.0]], columns=['x', 'y'])
  row = next(df_iter.iterrows())[1]
  print(row['x'].dtype)
  print(df_iter['x'].dtype)

itertuples

This method will return an iterator yielding a tuple for each row in the DataFrame. The first element of the tuple will be the row's corresponding index value, while the remaining values are the row values proper.

For instance,

.. ipython:: python

   for r in df2.itertuples():
       print(r)

Vectorized string methods

Series is equipped (as of pandas 0.8.1) with a set of string processing methods that make it easy to operate on each element of the array. Perhaps most importantly, these methods exclude missing/NA values automatically. These are accessed via the Series's str attribute and generally have names matching the equivalent (scalar) build-in string methods:

Splitting and Replacing Strings

.. ipython:: python

   s = Series(['A', 'B', 'C', 'Aaba', 'Baca', np.nan, 'CABA', 'dog', 'cat'])
   s.str.lower()
   s.str.upper()
   s.str.len()

Methods like split return a Series of lists:

.. ipython:: python

   s2 = Series(['a_b_c', 'c_d_e', np.nan, 'f_g_h'])
   s2.str.split('_')

Elements in the split lists can be accessed using get or [] notation:

.. ipython:: python

   s2.str.split('_').str.get(1)
   s2.str.split('_').str[1]

Methods like replace and findall take regular expressions, too:

.. ipython:: python

   s3 = Series(['A', 'B', 'C', 'Aaba', 'Baca',
               '', np.nan, 'CABA', 'dog', 'cat'])
   s3
   s3.str.replace('^.a|dog', 'XX-XX ', case=False)

Extracting Substrings

The method extract (introduced in version 0.13) accepts regular expressions with match groups. Extracting a regular expression with one group returns a Series of strings.

.. ipython:: python

   Series(['a1', 'b2', 'c3']).str.extract('[ab](\d)')

Elements that do not match return NaN. Extracting a regular expression with more than one group returns a DataFrame with one column per group.

.. ipython:: python

   Series(['a1', 'b2', 'c3']).str.extract('([ab])(\d)')

Elements that do not match return a row of NaN``s. Thus, a Series of messy strings can be "converted" into a like-indexed Series or DataFrame of cleaned-up or more useful strings, without necessitating ``get() to access tuples or re.match objects.

Named groups like

.. ipython:: python

   Series(['a1', 'b2', 'c3']).str.extract('(?P<letter>[ab])(?P<digit>\d)')

and optional groups like

.. ipython:: python

   Series(['a1', 'b2', '3']).str.extract('(?P<letter>[ab])?(?P<digit>\d)')

can also be used.

Testing for Strings that Match or Contain a Pattern

In previous versions, extracting match groups was accomplished by match, which returned a not-so-convenient Series of tuples. Starting in version 0.14, the default behavior of match will change. It will return a boolean indexer, analagous to the method contains.

The distinction between match and contains is strictness: match relies on strict re.match while contains relies on re.search.

In version 0.13, match performs its old, deprecated behavior by default, but the new behavior is availabe through the keyword argument as_indexer=True.

Methods like match, contains, startswith, and endswith take: an extra na arguement so missing values can be considered True or False:

.. ipython:: python

   s4 = Series(['A', 'B', 'C', 'Aaba', 'Baca', np.nan, 'CABA', 'dog', 'cat'])
   s4.str.contains('A', na=False)

Method	Description
`cat`	Concatenate strings
`split`	Split strings on delimiter
`get`	Index into each element (retrieve i-th element)
`join`	Join strings in each element of the Series with passed separator
`contains`	Return boolean array if each string contains pattern/regex
`replace`	Replace occurrences of pattern/regex with some other string
`repeat`	Duplicate values (`s.str.repeat(3)` equivalent to `x * 3`)
`pad`	Add whitespace to left, right, or both sides of strings
`center`	Equivalent to `pad(side='both')`
`slice`	Slice each string in the Series
`slice_replace`	Replace slice in each string with passed value
`count`	Count occurrences of pattern
`startswith`	Equivalent to `str.startswith(pat)` for each element
`endswidth`	Equivalent to `str.endswith(pat)` for each element
`findall`	Compute list of all occurrences of pattern/regex for each string
`match`	Call `re.match` on each element, returning matched groups as list
`extract`	Call `re.match` on each element, as `match` does, but return matched groups as strings for convenience.
`len`	Compute string lengths
`strip`	Equivalent to `str.strip`
`rstrip`	Equivalent to `str.rstrip`
`lstrip`	Equivalent to `str.lstrip`
`lower`	Equivalent to `str.lower`
`upper`	Equivalent to `str.upper`

Sorting by index and value

There are two obvious kinds of sorting that you may be interested in: sorting by label and sorting by actual values. The primary method for sorting axis labels (indexes) across data structures is the sort_index method.

.. ipython:: python

   unsorted_df = df.reindex(index=['a', 'd', 'c', 'b'],
                            columns=['three', 'two', 'one'])
   unsorted_df.sort_index()
   unsorted_df.sort_index(ascending=False)
   unsorted_df.sort_index(axis=1)

DataFrame.sort_index can accept an optional by argument for axis=0 which will use an arbitrary vector or a column name of the DataFrame to determine the sort order:

.. ipython:: python

   df1 = DataFrame({'one':[2,1,1,1],'two':[1,3,2,4],'three':[5,4,3,2]})
   df1.sort_index(by='two')

The by argument can take a list of column names, e.g.:

.. ipython:: python

   df1[['one', 'two', 'three']].sort_index(by=['one','two'])

Series has the method order (analogous to R's order function) which sorts by value, with special treatment of NA values via the na_last argument:

.. ipython:: python

   s[2] = np.nan
   s.order()
   s.order(na_last=False)

Some other sorting notes / nuances:

Series.sort sorts a Series by value in-place. This is to provide compatibility with NumPy methods which expect the ndarray.sort behavior.

DataFrame.sort takes a column argument instead of by. This method will likely be deprecated in a future release in favor of just using sort_index.

Copying

The copy method on pandas objects copies the underlying data (though not the axis indexes, since they are immutable) and returns a new object. Note that it is seldom necessary to copy objects. For example, there are only a handful of ways to alter a DataFrame in-place:

Inserting, deleting, or modifying a column

Assigning to the index or columns attributes

For homogeneous data, directly modifying the values via the values attribute or advanced indexing

To be clear, no pandas methods have the side effect of modifying your data; almost all methods return new objects, leaving the original object untouched. If data is modified, it is because you did so explicitly.

dtypes

The main types stored in pandas objects are float, int, bool, datetime64[ns], timedelta[ns], and object. In addition these dtypes have item sizes, e.g. int64 and int32. A convenient dtypes attribute for DataFrames returns a Series with the data type of each column.

.. ipython:: python

   dft = DataFrame(dict( A = np.random.rand(3),
                         B = 1,
                         C = 'foo',
                         D = Timestamp('20010102'),
                         E = Series([1.0]*3).astype('float32'),
                         F = False,
                         G = Series([1]*3,dtype='int8')))
   dft
   dft.dtypes

On a Series use the dtype method.

.. ipython:: python

   dft['A'].dtype

If a pandas object contains data multiple dtypes IN A SINGLE COLUMN, the dtype of the column will be chosen to accommodate all of the data types (object is the most general).

.. ipython:: python

   # these ints are coerced to floats
   Series([1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.])

   # string data forces an ``object`` dtype
   Series([1, 2, 3, 6., 'foo'])

The method get_dtype_counts will return the number of columns of each type in a DataFrame:

.. ipython:: python

   dft.get_dtype_counts()

Numeric dtypes will propagate and can coexist in DataFrames (starting in v0.11.0). If a dtype is passed (either directly via the dtype keyword, a passed ndarray, or a passed Series, then it will be preserved in DataFrame operations. Furthermore, different numeric dtypes will NOT be combined. The following example will give you a taste.

.. ipython:: python

   df1 = DataFrame(randn(8, 1), columns = ['A'], dtype = 'float32')
   df1
   df1.dtypes
   df2 = DataFrame(dict( A = Series(randn(8),dtype='float16'),
                         B = Series(randn(8)),
                         C = Series(np.array(randn(8),dtype='uint8')) ))
   df2
   df2.dtypes

defaults

By default integer types are int64 and float types are float64, REGARDLESS of platform (32-bit or 64-bit). The following will all result in int64 dtypes.

.. ipython:: python

   DataFrame([1, 2], columns=['a']).dtypes
   DataFrame({'a': [1, 2]}).dtypes
   DataFrame({'a': 1 }, index=list(range(2))).dtypes

Numpy, however will choose platform-dependent types when creating arrays. The following WILL result in int32 on 32-bit platform.

.. ipython:: python

   frame = DataFrame(np.array([1, 2]))

upcasting

Types can potentially be upcasted when combined with other types, meaning they are promoted from the current type (say int to float)

.. ipython:: python

   df3 = df1.reindex_like(df2).fillna(value=0.0) + df2
   df3
   df3.dtypes

The values attribute on a DataFrame return the lower-common-denominator of the dtypes, meaning the dtype that can accomodate ALL of the types in the resulting homogenous dtyped numpy array. This can force some upcasting.

.. ipython:: python

   df3.values.dtype

astype

You can use the astype method to explicity convert dtypes from one to another. These will by default return a copy, even if the dtype was unchanged (pass copy=False to change this behavior). In addition, they will raise an exception if the astype operation is invalid.

Upcasting is always according to the numpy rules. If two different dtypes are involved in an operation, then the more general one will be used as the result of the operation.

.. ipython:: python

   df3
   df3.dtypes

   # conversion of dtypes
   df3.astype('float32').dtypes

object conversion

convert_objects is a method to try to force conversion of types from the object dtype to other types. To force conversion of specific types that are number like, e.g. could be a string that represents a number, pass convert_numeric=True. This will force strings and numbers alike to be numbers if possible, otherwise they will be set to np.nan.

.. ipython:: python

   df3['D'] = '1.'
   df3['E'] = '1'
   df3.convert_objects(convert_numeric=True).dtypes

   # same, but specific dtype conversion
   df3['D'] = df3['D'].astype('float16')
   df3['E'] = df3['E'].astype('int32')
   df3.dtypes

To force conversion to datetime64[ns], pass convert_dates='coerce'. This will convert any datetimelike object to dates, forcing other values to NaT. This might be useful if you are reading in data which is mostly dates, but occasionally has non-dates intermixed and you want to represent as missing.

.. ipython:: python

   s = Series([datetime(2001,1,1,0,0),
              'foo', 1.0, 1, Timestamp('20010104'),
              '20010105'],dtype='O')
   s
   s.convert_objects(convert_dates='coerce')

In addition, convert_objects will attempt the soft conversion of any object dtypes, meaning that if all the objects in a Series are of the same type, the Series will have that dtype.

gotchas

Performing selection operations on integer type data can easily upcast the data to floating. The dtype of the input data will be preserved in cases where nans are not introduced (starting in 0.11.0) See also :ref:`integer na gotchas <gotchas.intna>`

.. ipython:: python

   dfi = df3.astype('int32')
   dfi['E'] = 1
   dfi
   dfi.dtypes

   casted = dfi[dfi>0]
   casted
   casted.dtypes

While float dtypes are unchanged.

.. ipython:: python

   dfa = df3.copy()
   dfa['A'] = dfa['A'].astype('float32')
   dfa.dtypes

   casted = dfa[df2>0]
   casted
   casted.dtypes

Working with package options

.. versionadded:: 0.10.1

Pandas has an options system that let's you customize some aspects of it's behaviour, display-related options being those the user is must likely to adjust.

Options have a full "dotted-style", case-insensitive name (e.g. display.max_rows), You can get/set options directly as attributes of the top-level options attribute:

.. ipython:: python

   import pandas as pd
   pd.options.display.max_rows
   pd.options.display.max_rows = 999
   pd.options.display.max_rows

There is also an API composed of 4 relevant functions, available directly from the pandas namespace, and they are:

get_option / set_option - get/set the value of a single option.
reset_option - reset one or more options to their default value.
describe_option - print the descriptions of one or more options.

Note: developers can check out pandas/core/config.py for more info.

All of the functions above accept a regexp pattern (re.search style) as an argument, and so passing in a substring will work - as long as it is unambiguous :

.. ipython:: python

   get_option("display.max_rows")
   set_option("display.max_rows",101)
   get_option("display.max_rows")
   set_option("max_r",102)
   get_option("display.max_rows")

The following will not work because it matches multiple option names, e.g. display.max_colwidth, display.max_rows, display.max_columns:

.. ipython:: python
   :okexcept:

   try:
       get_option("display.max_")
   except KeyError as e:
       print(e)

Note: Using this form of shorthand may cause your code to break if new options with similar names are added in future versions.

You can get a list of available options and their descriptions with describe_option. When called with no argument describe_option will print out the descriptions for all available options.

.. ipython:: python
   :suppress:

   reset_option("all")

.. ipython:: python

   describe_option()

or you can get the description for just the options that match the regexp you pass in:

.. ipython:: python

   describe_option("date")

All options also have a default value, and you can use the reset_option to do just that:

.. ipython:: python
   :suppress:

   reset_option("display.max_rows")

.. ipython:: python

   get_option("display.max_rows")
   set_option("display.max_rows",999)
   get_option("display.max_rows")
   reset_option("display.max_rows")
   get_option("display.max_rows")

It's also possible to reset multiple options at once (using a regex):

.. ipython:: python

   reset_option("^display")

Console Output Formatting

Use the set_eng_float_format function in the pandas.core.common module to alter the floating-point formatting of pandas objects to produce a particular format.

For instance:

.. ipython:: python

   set_eng_float_format(accuracy=3, use_eng_prefix=True)
   s = Series(randn(5), index=['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e'])
   s/1.e3
   s/1.e6

.. ipython:: python
   :suppress:

   reset_option('^display\.')

The set_printoptions function has a number of options for controlling how floating point numbers are formatted (using hte precision argument) in the console and . The max_rows and max_columns control how many rows and columns of DataFrame objects are shown by default. If max_columns is set to 0 (the default, in fact), the library will attempt to fit the DataFrame's string representation into the current terminal width, and defaulting to the summary view otherwise.

Files

basics.rst

Latest commit

History

basics.rst

File metadata and controls

Essential Basic Functionality

Head and Tail

Attributes and the raw ndarray(s)

Accelerated operations

Flexible binary operations

Matching / broadcasting behavior

Missing data / operations with fill values

Flexible Comparisons

Boolean Reductions

Combining overlapping data sets

General DataFrame Combine

Descriptive statistics

Summarizing data: describe

Index of Min/Max Values

Value counts (histogramming) / Mode

Discretization and quantiling

Function application

Applying elementwise Python functions

Reindexing and altering labels

Reindexing to align with another object

Reindexing with reindex_axis

Aligning objects with each other with align

Filling while reindexing

Dropping labels from an axis

Renaming / mapping labels

Iteration

iteritems

iterrows

itertuples

Vectorized string methods

Splitting and Replacing Strings

Extracting Substrings

Testing for Strings that Match or Contain a Pattern

Sorting by index and value

Copying

dtypes

defaults

upcasting

astype

object conversion

gotchas

Working with package options

Console Output Formatting

Reindexing with `reindex_axis`

Aligning objects with each other with `align`