10 Minutes to pandas

This is a short introduction to pandas, geared mainly for new users. You can see more complex recipes in the Cookbook

Customarily, we import as follows:

In [1]: import pandas as pd

In [2]: import numpy as np

In [3]: import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

Object Creation

See the Data Structure Intro section

Creating a Series by passing a list of values, letting pandas create a default integer index:

In [4]: s = pd.Series([1,3,5,np.nan,6,8])

In [5]: s
Out[5]: 
0    1.0
1    3.0
2    5.0
3    NaN
4    6.0
5    8.0
dtype: float64

Creating a DataFrame by passing a numpy array, with a datetime index and labeled columns:

In [6]: dates = pd.date_range('20130101', periods=6)

In [7]: dates
Out[7]: 
DatetimeIndex(['2013-01-01', '2013-01-02', '2013-01-03', '2013-01-04',
               '2013-01-05', '2013-01-06'],
              dtype='datetime64[ns]', freq='D')

In [8]: df = pd.DataFrame(np.random.randn(6,4), index=dates, columns=list('ABCD'))

In [9]: df
Out[9]: 
                   A         B         C         D
2013-01-01  0.469112 -0.282863 -1.509059 -1.135632
2013-01-02  1.212112 -0.173215  0.119209 -1.044236
2013-01-03 -0.861849 -2.104569 -0.494929  1.071804
2013-01-04  0.721555 -0.706771 -1.039575  0.271860
2013-01-05 -0.424972  0.567020  0.276232 -1.087401
2013-01-06 -0.673690  0.113648 -1.478427  0.524988

Creating a DataFrame by passing a dict of objects that can be converted to series-like.

In [10]: df2 = pd.DataFrame({ 'A' : 1.,
   ....:                      'B' : pd.Timestamp('20130102'),
   ....:                      'C' : pd.Series(1,index=list(range(4)),dtype='float32'),
   ....:                      'D' : np.array([3] * 4,dtype='int32'),
   ....:                      'E' : pd.Categorical(["test","train","test","train"]),
   ....:                      'F' : 'foo' })
   ....: 

In [11]: df2
Out[11]: 
     A          B    C  D      E    F
0  1.0 2013-01-02  1.0  3   test  foo
1  1.0 2013-01-02  1.0  3  train  foo
2  1.0 2013-01-02  1.0  3   test  foo
3  1.0 2013-01-02  1.0  3  train  foo

Having specific dtypes

In [12]: df2.dtypes
Out[12]: 
A           float64
B    datetime64[ns]
C           float32
D             int32
E          category
F            object
dtype: object

If you’re using IPython, tab completion for column names (as well as public attributes) is automatically enabled. Here’s a subset of the attributes that will be completed:

In [13]: df2.<TAB>
df2.A                  df2.bool
df2.abs                df2.boxplot
df2.add                df2.C
df2.add_prefix         df2.clip
df2.add_suffix         df2.clip_lower
df2.align              df2.clip_upper
df2.all                df2.columns
df2.any                df2.combine
df2.append             df2.combine_first
df2.apply              df2.compound
df2.applymap           df2.consolidate
df2.as_blocks          df2.convert_objects
df2.asfreq             df2.copy
df2.as_matrix          df2.corr
df2.astype             df2.corrwith
df2.at                 df2.count
df2.at_time            df2.cov
df2.axes               df2.cummax
df2.B                  df2.cummin
df2.between_time       df2.cumprod
df2.bfill              df2.cumsum
df2.blocks             df2.D

As you can see, the columns A, B, C, and D are automatically tab completed. E is there as well; the rest of the attributes have been truncated for brevity.

Viewing Data

See the Basics section

See the top & bottom rows of the frame

In [14]: df.head()
Out[14]: 
                   A         B         C         D
2013-01-01  0.469112 -0.282863 -1.509059 -1.135632
2013-01-02  1.212112 -0.173215  0.119209 -1.044236
2013-01-03 -0.861849 -2.104569 -0.494929  1.071804
2013-01-04  0.721555 -0.706771 -1.039575  0.271860
2013-01-05 -0.424972  0.567020  0.276232 -1.087401

In [15]: df.tail(3)