Intro to Data Structures – Zhuo Yao, Ph.D.

We’ll start with a quick, non-comprehensive overview of the fundamental data structures in pandas to get you started. The fundamental behavior about data types, indexing, and axis labeling / alignment apply across all of the objects. To get started, import numpy and load pandas into your namespace:

In [477]: import numpy as np

# will use a lot in examples
In [478]: randn = np.random.randn

In [479]: from pandas import *

Here is a basic tenet to keep in mind: data alignment is intrinsic. The link between labels and data will not be broken unless done so explicitly by you.

We’ll give a brief intro to the data structures, then consider all of the broad categories of functionality and methods in separate sections.

When using pandas, we recommend the following import convention:

import pandas as pd

Series

Series is a one-dimensional labeled array (technically a subclass of ndarray) capable of holding any data type (integers, strings, floating point numbers, Python objects, etc.). The axis labels are collectively referred to as the index. The basic method to create a Series is to call:

>>> s = Series(data, index=index)

Here, data can be many different things:

a Python dict

an ndarray

a scalar value (like 5)

The passed index is a list of axis labels. Thus, this separates into a few cases depending on what data is:

From ndarray

If data is an ndarray, index must be the same length as data. If no index is passed, one will be created having values [0, ..., len(data) - 1].

In [480]: s = Series(randn(5), index=['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e'])

In [481]: s
Out[481]: 
a    0.405
b    0.577
c   -1.715
d   -1.039
e   -0.371
dtype: float64

In [482]: s.index
Out[482]: Index([a, b, c, d, e], dtype=object)

In [483]: Series(randn(5))
Out[483]: 
0   -1.158
1   -1.344
2    0.845
3    1.076
4   -0.109
dtype: float64

Note

Starting in v0.8.0, pandas supports non-unique index values. In previous version, if the index values are not unique an exception will not be raised immediately, but attempting any operation involving the index will later result in an exception. In other words, the Index object containing the labels “lazily” checks whether the values are unique. The reason for being lazy is nearly all performance-based (there are many instances in computations, like parts of GroupBy, where the index is not used).

From dict

If data is a dict, if index is passed the values in data corresponding to the labels in the index will be pulled out. Otherwise, an index will be constructed from the sorted keys of the dict, if possible.

In [484]: d = {'a' : 0., 'b' : 1., 'c' : 2.}

In [485]: Series(d)
Out[485]: 
a    0
b    1
c    2
dtype: float64

In [486]: Series(d, index=['b', 'c', 'd', 'a'])
Out[486]: 
b     1
c     2
d   NaN
a     0
dtype: float64

Note

NaN (not a number) is the standard missing data marker used in pandas

From scalar value If data is a scalar value, an index must be provided. The value will be repeated to match the length of index

In [487]: Series(5., index=['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e'])
Out[487]: 
a    5
b    5
c    5
d    5
e    5
dtype: float64

Series is ndarray-like

As a subclass of ndarray, Series is a valid argument to most NumPy functions and behaves similarly to a NumPy array. However, things like slicing also slice the index.

In [488]: s[0]
Out[488]: 0.40470521868023651

In [489]: s[:3]
Out[489]: 
a    0.405
b    0.577
c   -1.715
dtype: float64

In [490]: s[s > s.median()]
Out[490]: 
a    0.405
b    0.577
dtype: float64

In [491]: s[[4, 3, 1]]
Out[491]: 
e   -0.371
d   -1.039
b    0.577
dtype: float64

In [492]: np.exp(s)
Out[492]: 
a    1.499
b    1.781
c    0.180
d    0.354
e    0.690
dtype: float64

We will address array-based indexing in a separate section.

Series is dict-like

A Series is like a fixed-size dict in that you can get and set values by index label:

In [493]: s['a']
Out[493]: 0.40470521868023651

In [494]: s['e'] = 12.

In [495]: s
Out[495]: 
a     0.405
b     0.577
c    -1.715
d    -1.039
e    12.000
dtype: float64

In [496]: 'e' in s
Out[496]: True

In [497]: 'f' in s
Out[497]: False

If a label is not contained, an exception is raised:

>>> s['f']
KeyError: 'f'

Using the get method, a missing label will return None or specified default:

In [498]: s.get('f')

In [499]: s.get('f', np.nan)
Out[499]: nan

Vectorized operations and label alignment with Series

When doing data analysis, as with raw NumPy arrays looping through Series value-by-value is usually not necessary. Series can be also be passed into most NumPy methods expecting an ndarray.

In [500]: s + s
Out[500]: 
a     0.809
b     1.154
c    -3.430
d    -2.079
e    24.000
dtype: float64

In [501]: s * 2
Out[501]: 
a     0.809
b     1.154
c    -3.430
d    -2.079
e    24.000
dtype: float64

In [502]: np.exp(s)
Out[502]: 
a         1.499
b         1.781
c         0.180
d         0.354
e    162754.791
dtype: float64

A key difference between Series and ndarray is that operations between Series automatically align the data based on label. Thus, you can write computations without giving consideration to whether the Series involved have the same labels.

In [503]: s[1:] + s[:-1]
Out[503]: 
a      NaN
b    1.154
c   -3.430
d   -2.079
e      NaN
dtype: float64

The result of an operation between unaligned Series will have the union of the indexes involved. If a label is not found in one Series or the other, the result will be marked as missing (NaN). Being able to write code without doing any explicit data alignment grants immense freedom and flexibility in interactive data analysis and research. The integrated data alignment features of the pandas data structures set pandas apart from the majority of related tools for working with labeled data.

Note

In general, we chose to make the default result of operations between differently indexed objects yield the union of the indexes in order to avoid loss of information. Having an index label, though the data is missing, is typically important information as part of a computation. You of course have the option of dropping labels with missing data via thedropna function.

Name attribute

Series can also have a name attribute:

In [504]: s = Series(np.random.randn(5), name='something')

In [505]: s
Out[505]: 
0    1.644
1   -1.469
2    0.357
3   -0.675
4   -1.777
Name: something, dtype: float64

In [506]: s.name
Out[506]: 'something'

The Series name will be assigned automatically in many cases, in particular when taking 1D slices of DataFrame as you will see below.

DataFrame

DataFrame is a 2-dimensional labeled data structure with columns of potentially different types. You can think of it like a spreadsheet or SQL table, or a dict of Series objects. It is generally the most commonly used pandas object. Like Series, DataFrame accepts many different kinds of input:

Dict of 1D ndarrays, lists, dicts, or Series

2-D numpy.ndarray

Structured or record ndarray

A Series

Another DataFrame

Along with the data, you can optionally pass index (row labels) and columns (column labels) arguments. If you pass an index and / or columns, you are guaranteeing the index and / or columns of the resulting DataFrame. Thus, a dict of Series plus a specific index will discard all data not matching up to the passed index.

If axis labels are not passed, they will be constructed from the input data based on common sense rules.

From dict of Series or dicts

The result index will be the union of the indexes of the various Series. If there are any nested dicts, these will be first converted to Series. If no columns are passed, the columns will be the sorted list of dict keys.

In [507]: d = {'one' : Series([1., 2., 3.], index=['a', 'b', 'c']),
   .....:      'two' : Series([1., 2., 3., 4.], index=['a', 'b', 'c', 'd'])}
   .....:

In [508]: df = DataFrame(d)

In [509]: df
Out[509]: 
   one  two
a    1    1
b    2    2
c    3    3
d  NaN    4

In [510]: DataFrame(d, index=['d', 'b', 'a'])
Out[510]: 
   one  two
d  NaN    4
b    2    2
a    1    1

In [511]: DataFrame(d, index=['d', 'b', 'a'], columns=['two', 'three'])
Out[511]: 
   two three
d    4   NaN
b    2   NaN
a    1   NaN

The row and column labels can be accessed respectively by accessing the index andcolumns attributes:

Note

When a particular set of columns is passed along with a dict of data, the passed columns override the keys in the dict.

In [512]: df.index
Out[512]: Index([a, b, c, d], dtype=object)

In [513]: df.columns
Out[513]: Index([one, two], dtype=object)

From dict of ndarrays / lists

The ndarrays must all be the same length. If an index is passed, it must clearly also be the same length as the arrays. If no index is passed, the result will be range(n), where n is the array length.

In [514]: d = {'one' : [1., 2., 3., 4.],
   .....:      'two' : [4., 3., 2., 1.]}
   .....:

In [515]: DataFrame(d)
Out[515]: 
   one  two
0    1    4
1    2    3
2    3    2
3    4    1

In [516]: DataFrame(d, index=['a', 'b', 'c', 'd'])
Out[516]: 
   one  two
a    1    4
b    2    3
c    3    2
d    4    1

From structured or record array

This case is handled identically to a dict of arrays.

In [517]: data = np.zeros((2,),dtype=[('A', 'i4'),('B', 'f4'),('C', 'a10')])

In [518]: data[:] = [(1,2.,'Hello'),(2,3.,"World")]

In [519]: DataFrame(data)
Out[519]: 
   A  B      C
0  1  2  Hello
1  2  3  World

In [520]: DataFrame(data, index=['first', 'second'])
Out[520]: 
        A  B      C
first   1  2  Hello
second  2  3  World

In [521]: DataFrame(data, columns=['C', 'A', 'B'])
Out[521]: 
       C  A  B
0  Hello  1  2
1  World  2  3

Note

DataFrame is not intended to work exactly like a 2-dimensional NumPy ndarray.

From a list of dicts

In [522]: data2 = [{'a': 1, 'b': 2}, {'a': 5, 'b': 10, 'c': 20}]

In [523]: DataFrame(data2)
Out[523]: 
   a   b   c
0  1   2 NaN
1  5  10  20

In [524]: DataFrame(data2, index=['first', 'second'])
Out[524]: 
        a   b   c
first   1   2 NaN
second  5  10  20

In [525]: DataFrame(data2, columns=['a', 'b'])
Out[525]: 
   a   b
0  1   2
1  5  10

From a Series

The result will be a DataFrame with the same index as the input Series, and with one column whose name is the original name of the Series (only if no other column name provided).

Missing Data

Much more will be said on this topic in the Missing data section. To construct a DataFrame with missing data, use np.nan for those values which are missing. Alternatively, you may pass a numpy.MaskedArray as the data argument to the DataFrame constructor, and its masked entries will be considered missing.

Alternate Constructors

DataFrame.from_dict

DataFrame.from_dict takes a dict of dicts or a dict of array-like sequences and returns a DataFrame. It operates like the DataFrame constructor except for the orient parameter which is 'columns' by default, but which can be set to 'index' in order to use the dict keys as row labels.

DataFrame.from_records

DataFrame.from_records takes a list of tuples or an ndarray with structured dtype. Works analogously to the normal DataFrame constructor, except that index maybe be a specific field of the structured dtype to use as the index. For example:

In [526]: data
Out[526]: 
array([(1, 2.0, 'Hello'), (2, 3.0, 'World')], 
      dtype=[('A', '<i4'), ('B', '<f4'), ('C', '|S10')])

In [527]: DataFrame.from_records(data, index='C')
Out[527]: 
       A  B
C          
Hello  1  2
World  2  3

DataFrame.from_items

DataFrame.from_items works analogously to the form of the dict constructor that takes a sequence of (key, value) pairs, where the keys are column (or row, in the case oforient='index') names, and the value are the column values (or row values). This can be useful for constructing a DataFrame with the columns in a particular order without having to pass an explicit list of columns:

In [528]: DataFrame.from_items([('A', [1, 2, 3]), ('B', [4, 5, 6])])
Out[528]: 
   A  B
0  1  4
1  2  5
2  3  6

If you pass orient='index', the keys will be the row labels. But in this case you must also pass the desired column names:

In [529]: DataFrame.from_items([('A', [1, 2, 3]), ('B', [4, 5, 6])],
   .....:                      orient='index', columns=['one', 'two', 'three'])
   .....:
Out[529]: 
   one  two  three
A    1    2      3
B    4    5      6

Column selection, addition, deletion

You can treat a DataFrame semantically like a dict of like-indexed Series objects. Getting, setting, and deleting columns works with the same syntax as the analogous dict operations:

In [530]: df['one']
Out[530]: 
a     1
b     2
c     3
d   NaN
Name: one, dtype: float64

In [531]: df['three'] = df['one'] * df['two']

In [532]: df['flag'] = df['one'] > 2

In [533]: df
Out[533]: 
   one  two  three   flag
a    1    1      1  False
b    2    2      4  False
c    3    3      9   True
d  NaN    4    NaN  False

Columns can be deleted or popped like with a dict:

In [534]: del df['two']

In [535]: three = df.pop('three')

In [536]: df
Out[536]: 
   one   flag
a    1  False
b    2  False
c    3   True
d  NaN  False

When inserting a scalar value, it will naturally be propagated to fill the column:

In [537]: df['foo'] = 'bar'

In [538]: df
Out[538]: 
   one   flag  foo
a    1  False  bar
b    2  False  bar
c    3   True  bar
d  NaN  False  bar

When inserting a Series that does not have the same index as the DataFrame, it will be conformed to the DataFrame’s index:

In [539]: df['one_trunc'] = df['one'][:2]

In [540]: df
Out[540]: 
   one   flag  foo  one_trunc
a    1  False  bar          1
b    2  False  bar          2
c    3   True  bar        NaN
d  NaN  False  bar        NaN

You can insert raw ndarrays but their length must match the length of the DataFrame’s index.

By default, columns get inserted at the end. The insert function is available to insert at a particular location in the columns:

In [541]: df.insert(1, 'bar', df['one'])

In [542]: df
Out[542]: 
   one  bar   flag  foo  one_trunc
a    1    1  False  bar          1
b    2    2  False  bar          2
c    3    3   True  bar        NaN
d  NaN  NaN  False  bar        NaN

Indexing / Selection

The basics of indexing are as follows:

Operation	Syntax	Result
Select column	`df[col]`	Series
Select row by label	`df.loc[label]`	Series
Select row by integer location	`df.iloc[loc]`	Series
Slice rows	`df[5:10]`	DataFrame
Select rows by boolean vector	`df[bool_vec]`	DataFrame

Row selection, for example, returns a Series whose index is the columns of the DataFrame:

In [543]: df.loc['b']
Out[543]: 
one              2
bar              2
flag         False
foo            bar
one_trunc        2
Name: b, dtype: object

In [544]: df.iloc[2]
Out[544]: 
one             3
bar             3
flag         True
foo           bar
one_trunc     NaN
Name: c, dtype: object

For a more exhaustive treatment of more sophisticated label-based indexing and slicing, see the section on indexing. We will address the fundamentals of reindexing / conforming to new sets of lables in the section on reindexing.

Data alignment and arithmetic

Data alignment between DataFrame objects automatically align on both the columns and the index (row labels). Again, the resulting object will have the union of the column and row labels.

In [545]: df = DataFrame(randn(10, 4), columns=['A', 'B', 'C', 'D'])

In [546]: df2 = DataFrame(randn(7, 3), columns=['A', 'B', 'C'])

In [547]: df + df2
Out[547]: 
       A      B      C   D
0 -1.697 -1.416  0.316 NaN
1  0.224  0.328  0.597 NaN
2 -2.033  0.276  0.955 NaN
3  1.833  2.119  1.517 NaN
4  0.177  0.256  1.115 NaN
5 -3.007 -1.446 -2.142 NaN
6  0.026 -3.157  0.781 NaN
7    NaN    NaN    NaN NaN
8    NaN    NaN    NaN NaN
9    NaN    NaN    NaN NaN

When doing an operation between DataFrame and Series, the default behavior is to align the Series index on the DataFrame columns, thus broadcasting row-wise. For example:

In [548]: df - df.iloc[0]
Out[548]: 
       A      B      C      D
0  0.000  0.000  0.000  0.000
1  0.497  1.281 -0.776 -0.283
2  0.046  2.190  0.392 -1.483
3  3.535  2.726  0.927 -1.447
4  0.743  1.705  0.400 -0.145
5  0.142  1.218 -1.601  0.853
6 -0.468 -0.119  1.194  0.748
7  1.539  2.170 -2.625  0.698
8 -1.038  0.885 -0.492  0.269
9 -0.250  0.068  0.356 -1.558

In the special case of working with time series data, if the Series is a TimeSeries (which it will be automatically if the index contains datetime objects), and the DataFrame index also contains dates, the broadcasting will be column-wise:

In [549]: index = date_range('1/1/2000', periods=8)

In [550]: df = DataFrame(randn(8, 3), index=index,
   .....:                columns=['A', 'B', 'C'])
   .....:

In [551]: df
Out[551]: 
                A      B      C
2000-01-01 -0.345  1.314  0.691
2000-01-02  0.996  2.397  0.015
2000-01-03  3.357 -0.317 -1.236
2000-01-04  0.896 -0.488 -0.082
2000-01-05 -2.183  0.380  0.085
2000-01-06  0.432  1.520 -0.494
2000-01-07  0.600  0.274  0.133
2000-01-08 -0.024  2.410  1.451

In [552]: type(df['A'])
Out[552]: pandas.core.series.TimeSeries

In [553]: df - df['A']
Out[553]: 
            A      B      C
2000-01-01  0  1.660  1.036
2000-01-02  0  1.401 -0.981
2000-01-03  0 -3.675 -4.594
2000-01-04  0 -1.384 -0.978
2000-01-05  0  2.563  2.268
2000-01-06  0  1.088 -0.926
2000-01-07  0 -0.326 -0.467
2000-01-08  0  2.434  1.474

Technical purity aside, this case is so common in practice that supporting the special case is preferable to the alternative of forcing the user to transpose and do column-based alignment like so:

In [554]: (df.T - df['A']).T
Out[554]: 
            A      B      C
2000-01-01  0  1.660  1.036
2000-01-02  0  1.401 -0.981
2000-01-03  0 -3.675 -4.594
2000-01-04  0 -1.384 -0.978
2000-01-05  0  2.563  2.268
2000-01-06  0  1.088 -0.926
2000-01-07  0 -0.326 -0.467
2000-01-08  0  2.434  1.474

For explicit control over the matching and broadcasting behavior, see the section on flexible binary operations.

Operations with scalars are just as you would expect:

In [555]: df * 5 + 2
Out[555]: 
                 A       B      C
2000-01-01   0.273   8.571  5.453
2000-01-02   6.979  13.984  2.074
2000-01-03  18.787   0.413 -4.181
2000-01-04   6.481  -0.438  1.589
2000-01-05  -8.915   3.902  2.424
2000-01-06   4.162   9.600 -0.468
2000-01-07   5.001   3.371  2.664
2000-01-08   1.882  14.051  9.253

In [556]: 1 / df
Out[556]: 
                 A      B       C
2000-01-01  -2.896  0.761   1.448
2000-01-02   1.004  0.417  67.245
2000-01-03   0.298 -3.150  -0.809
2000-01-04   1.116 -2.051 -12.159
2000-01-05  -0.458  2.629  11.786
2000-01-06   2.313  0.658  -2.026
2000-01-07   1.666  3.647   7.525
2000-01-08 -42.215  0.415   0.689

In [557]: df ** 4
Out[557]: 
                    A       B          C
2000-01-01  1.422e-02   2.983  2.274e-01
2000-01-02  9.832e-01  33.000  4.891e-08
2000-01-03  1.271e+02   0.010  2.336e+00
2000-01-04  6.450e-01   0.057  4.574e-05
2000-01-05  2.271e+01   0.021  5.182e-05
2000-01-06  3.495e-02   5.338  5.939e-02
2000-01-07  1.298e-01   0.006  3.118e-04
2000-01-08  3.149e-07  33.744  4.427e+00

Boolean operators work as well:

In [558]: df1 = DataFrame({'a' : [1, 0, 1], 'b' : [0, 1, 1] }, dtype=bool)

In [559]: df2 = DataFrame({'a' : [0, 1, 1], 'b' : [1, 1, 0] }, dtype=bool)

In [560]: df1 & df2
Out[560]: 
       a      b
0  False  False
1  False   True
2   True  False

In [561]: df1 | df2
Out[561]: 
      a     b
0  True  True
1  True  True
2  True  True

In [562]: df1 ^ df2
Out[562]: 
       a      b
0   True   True
1   True  False
2  False   True

In [563]: -df1
Out[563]: 
       a      b
0  False   True
1   True  False
2  False  False

Transposing

To transpose, access the T attribute (also the transpose function), similar to an ndarray:

# only show the first 5 rows
In [564]: df[:5].T
Out[564]: 
   2000-01-01  2000-01-02  2000-01-03  2000-01-04  2000-01-05
A      -0.345       0.996       3.357       0.896      -2.183
B       1.314       2.397      -0.317      -0.488       0.380
C       0.691       0.015      -1.236      -0.082       0.085

DataFrame interoperability with NumPy functions

Elementwise NumPy ufuncs (log, exp, sqrt, …) and various other NumPy functions can be used with no issues on DataFrame, assuming the data within are numeric:

In [565]: np.exp(df)
Out[565]: 
                 A       B      C
2000-01-01   0.708   3.722  1.995
2000-01-02   2.707  10.988  1.015
2000-01-03  28.715   0.728  0.290
2000-01-04   2.450   0.614  0.921
2000-01-05   0.113   1.463  1.089
2000-01-06   1.541   4.572  0.610
2000-01-07   1.822   1.316  1.142
2000-01-08   0.977  11.136  4.265

In [566]: np.asarray(df)
Out[566]: 
array([[-0.3454,  1.3142,  0.6906],
       [ 0.9958,  2.3968,  0.0149],
       [ 3.3574, -0.3174, -1.2363],
       [ 0.8962, -0.4876, -0.0822],
       [-2.1829,  0.3804,  0.0848],
       [ 0.4324,  1.52  , -0.4937],
       [ 0.6002,  0.2742,  0.1329],
       [-0.0237,  2.4102,  1.4505]])

The dot method on DataFrame implements matrix multiplication:

In [567]: df.T.dot(df)
Out[567]: 
        A       B      C
A  18.499   0.364 -4.801
B   0.364  16.149  4.190
C  -4.801   4.190  4.385

Similarly, the dot method on Series implements dot product:

In [568]: s1 = Series(np.arange(5,10))

In [569]: s1.dot(s1)
Out[569]: 255

DataFrame is not intended to be a drop-in replacement for ndarray as its indexing semantics are quite different in places from a matrix.

Console display

For very large DataFrame objects, only a summary will be printed to the console (here I am reading a CSV version of the baseball dataset from the plyr R package):

In [570]: baseball = read_csv('data/baseball.csv')

In [571]: print baseball
<class 'pandas.core.frame.DataFrame'>
Int64Index: 100 entries, 88641 to 89534
Data columns (total 22 columns):
id       100  non-null values
year     100  non-null values
stint    100  non-null values
team     100  non-null values
lg       100  non-null values
g        100  non-null values
ab       100  non-null values
r        100  non-null values
h        100  non-null values
X2b      100  non-null values
X3b      100  non-null values
hr       100  non-null values
rbi      100  non-null values
sb       100  non-null values
cs       100  non-null values
bb       100  non-null values
so       100  non-null values
ibb      100  non-null values
hbp      100  non-null values
sh       100  non-null values
sf       100  non-null values
gidp     100  non-null values
dtypes: float64(9), int64(10), object(3)

However, using to_string will return a string representation of the DataFrame in tabular form, though it won’t always fit the console width:

In [572]: print baseball.iloc[-20:, :12].to_string()
              id  year  stint team  lg    g   ab   r    h  X2b  X3b  hr
89474  finlest01  2007      1  COL  NL   43   94   9   17    3    0   1
89480  embreal01  2007      1  OAK  AL    4    0   0    0    0    0   0
89481  edmonji01  2007      1  SLN  NL  117  365  39   92   15    2  12
89482  easleda01  2007      1  NYN  NL   76  193  24   54    6    0  10
89489  delgaca01  2007      1  NYN  NL  139  538  71  139   30    0  24
89493  cormirh01  2007      1  CIN  NL    6    0   0    0    0    0   0
89494  coninje01  2007      2  NYN  NL   21   41   2    8    2    0   0
89495  coninje01  2007      1  CIN  NL   80  215  23   57   11    1   6
89497  clemero02  2007      1  NYA  AL    2    2   0    1    0    0   0
89498  claytro01  2007      2  BOS  AL    8    6   1    0    0    0   0
89499  claytro01  2007      1  TOR  AL   69  189  23   48   14    0   1
89501  cirilje01  2007      2  ARI  NL   28   40   6    8    4    0   0
89502  cirilje01  2007      1  MIN  AL   50  153  18   40    9    2   2
89521  bondsba01  2007      1  SFN  NL  126  340  75   94   14    0  28
89523  biggicr01  2007      1  HOU  NL  141  517  68  130   31    3  10
89525  benitar01  2007      2  FLO  NL   34    0   0    0    0    0   0
89526  benitar01  2007      1  SFN  NL   19    0   0    0    0    0   0
89530  ausmubr01  2007      1  HOU  NL  117  349  38   82   16    3   3
89533   aloumo01  2007      1  NYN  NL   87  328  51  112   19    1  13
89534  alomasa02  2007      1  NYN  NL    8   22   1    3    1    0   0

New since 0.10.0, wide DataFrames will now be printed across multiple rows by default:

In [573]: DataFrame(randn(3, 12))
Out[573]: 
         0         1         2         3         4         5         6         7   \
0  0.206053 -0.251905 -2.213588  1.063327  1.266143  0.299368 -0.863838  0.408204   
1  1.262731  1.289997  0.082423 -0.055758  0.536580 -0.489682  0.369374 -0.034571   
2  1.126203 -0.977349  1.474071 -0.064034 -1.282782  0.781836 -1.071357  0.441153   
         8         9         10        11  
0 -1.048089 -0.025747 -0.988387  0.094055  
1 -2.484478 -0.281461  0.030711  0.109121  
2  2.353925  0.583787  0.221471 -0.744471

You can change how much to print on a single row by setting the line_width option:

In [574]: set_option('line_width', 40) # default is 80

In [575]: DataFrame(randn(3, 12))
Out[575]: 
         0         1         2         3   \
0  0.758527  1.729689 -0.964980 -0.845696   
1  1.171216  0.520260 -1.197071 -1.066969   
2  0.473424 -0.242861 -0.014805 -0.284319   
         4         5         6         7   \
0 -1.340896  1.846883 -1.328865  1.682706   
1 -0.303421 -0.858447  0.306996 -0.028665   
2  0.650776 -1.461665 -1.137707 -0.891060   
         8         9         10        11  
0 -1.717693  0.888782  0.228440  0.901805  
1  0.384316  1.574159  1.588931  0.476720  
2 -0.693921  1.613616  0.464000  0.227371

You can also disable this feature via the expand_frame_repr option:

In [576]: set_option('expand_frame_repr', False)

In [577]: DataFrame(randn(3, 12))
Out[577]: 
<class 'pandas.core.frame.DataFrame'>
Int64Index: 3 entries, 0 to 2
Data columns (total 12 columns):
0     3  non-null values
1     3  non-null values
2     3  non-null values
3     3  non-null values
4     3  non-null values
5     3  non-null values
6     3  non-null values
7     3  non-null values
8     3  non-null values
9     3  non-null values
10    3  non-null values
11    3  non-null values
dtypes: float64(12)

DataFrame column attribute access and IPython completion

If a DataFrame column label is a valid Python variable name, the column can be accessed like attributes:

In [578]: df = DataFrame({'foo1' : np.random.randn(5),
   .....:                 'foo2' : np.random.randn(5)})
   .....:

In [579]: df
Out[579]: 
       foo1      foo2
0  1.146000  0.563700
1  1.487349  0.967661
2  0.604603 -1.057909
3  2.121453  1.375020
4  0.597701 -0.928797

In [580]: df.foo1
Out[580]: 
0    1.146000
1    1.487349
2    0.604603
3    2.121453
4    0.597701
Name: foo1, dtype: float64

The columns are also connected to the IPython completion mechanism so they can be tab-completed:

In [5]: df.fo<TAB>
df.foo1  df.foo2

Panel

Panel is a somewhat less-used, but still important container for 3-dimensional data. The term panel data is derived from econometrics and is partially responsible for the name pandas: pan(el)-da(ta)-s. The names for the 3 axes are intended to give some semantic meaning to describing operations involving panel data and, in particular, econometric analysis of panel data. However, for the strict purposes of slicing and dicing a collection of DataFrame objects, you may find the axis names slightly arbitrary:

items: axis 0, each item corresponds to a DataFrame contained inside

major_axis: axis 1, it is the index (rows) of each of the DataFrames

minor_axis: axis 2, it is the columns of each of the DataFrames

Construction of Panels works about like you would expect:

From 3D ndarray with optional axis labels

In [581]: wp = Panel(randn(2, 5, 4), items=['Item1', 'Item2'],
   .....:            major_axis=date_range('1/1/2000', periods=5),
   .....:            minor_axis=['A', 'B', 'C', 'D'])
   .....:

In [582]: wp
Out[582]: 
<class 'pandas.core.panel.Panel'>
Dimensions: 2 (items) x 5 (major_axis) x 4 (minor_axis)
Items axis: Item1 to Item2
Major_axis axis: 2000-01-01 00:00:00 to 2000-01-05 00:00:00
Minor_axis axis: A to D

From dict of DataFrame objects

In [583]: data = {'Item1' : DataFrame(randn(4, 3)),
   .....:         'Item2' : DataFrame(randn(4, 2))}
   .....:

In [584]: Panel(data)
Out[584]: 
<class 'pandas.core.panel.Panel'>
Dimensions: 2 (items) x 4 (major_axis) x 3 (minor_axis)
Items axis: Item1 to Item2
Major_axis axis: 0 to 3
Minor_axis axis: 0 to 2

Note that the values in the dict need only be convertible to DataFrame. Thus, they can be any of the other valid inputs to DataFrame as per above.

One helpful factory method is Panel.from_dict, which takes a dictionary of DataFrames as above, and the following named parameters:

Parameter	Default	Description
intersect	`False`	drops elements whose indices do not align
orient	`items`	use `minor` to use DataFrames’ columns as panel items

For example, compare to the construction above:

In [585]: Panel.from_dict(data, orient='minor')
Out[585]: 
<class 'pandas.core.panel.Panel'>
Dimensions: 3 (items) x 4 (major_axis) x 2 (minor_axis)
Items axis: 0 to 2
Major_axis axis: 0 to 3
Minor_axis axis: Item1 to Item2

Orient is especially useful for mixed-type DataFrames. If you pass a dict of DataFrame objects with mixed-type columns, all of the data will get upcasted to dtype=object unless you pass orient='minor':

In [586]: df = DataFrame({'a': ['foo', 'bar', 'baz'],
   .....:                 'b': np.random.randn(3)})
   .....:

In [587]: df
Out[587]: 
     a         b
0  foo -1.537770
1  bar  0.555759
2  baz -2.277282

In [588]: data = {'item1': df, 'item2': df}

In [589]: panel = Panel.from_dict(data, orient='minor')

In [590]: panel['a']
Out[590]: 
  item1 item2
0   foo   foo
1   bar   bar
2   baz   baz

In [591]: panel['b']
Out[591]: 
      item1     item2
0 -1.537770 -1.537770
1  0.555759  0.555759
2 -2.277282 -2.277282

In [592]: panel['b'].dtypes
Out[592]: 
item1    float64
item2    float64
dtype: object

Note

Unfortunately Panel, being less commonly used than Series and DataFrame, has been slightly neglected feature-wise. A number of methods and options available in DataFrame are not available in Panel. This will get worked on, of course, in future releases. And faster if you join me in working on the codebase.

From DataFrame using `to_panel` method

This method was introduced in v0.7 to replace LongPanel.to_long, and converts a DataFrame with a two-level index to a Panel.

In [593]: midx = MultiIndex(levels=[['one', 'two'], ['x','y']], labels=[[1,1,0,0],[1,0,1,0]])

In [594]: df = DataFrame({'A' : [1, 2, 3, 4], 'B': [5, 6, 7, 8]}, index=midx)

In [595]: df.to_panel()
Out[595]: 
<class 'pandas.core.panel.Panel'>
Dimensions: 2 (items) x 2 (major_axis) x 2 (minor_axis)
Items axis: A to B
Major_axis axis: one to two
Minor_axis axis: x to y

Item selection / addition / deletion

Similar to DataFrame functioning as a dict of Series, Panel is like a dict of DataFrames:

In [596]: wp['Item1']
Out[596]: 
                   A         B         C         D
2000-01-01 -0.308853 -0.681087  0.377953  0.493672
2000-01-02 -2.461467 -1.553902  2.015523 -1.833722
2000-01-03  1.771740 -0.670027  0.049307 -0.521493
2000-01-04 -3.201750  0.792716  0.146111  1.903247
2000-01-05 -0.747169 -0.309038  0.393876  1.861468

In [597]: wp['Item3'] = wp['Item1'] / wp['Item2']

The API for insertion and deletion is the same as for DataFrame. And as with DataFrame, if the item is a valid python identifier, you can access it as an attribute and tab-complete it in IPython.

Transposing

A Panel can be rearranged using its transpose method (which does not make a copy by default unless the data are heterogeneous):

In [598]: wp.transpose(2, 0, 1)
Out[598]: 
<class 'pandas.core.panel.Panel'>
Dimensions: 4 (items) x 3 (major_axis) x 5 (minor_axis)
Items axis: A to D
Major_axis axis: Item1 to Item3
Minor_axis axis: 2000-01-01 00:00:00 to 2000-01-05 00:00:00

Indexing / Selection

Operation	Syntax	Result
Select item	`wp[item]`	DataFrame
Get slice at major_axis label	`wp.major_xs(val)`	DataFrame
Get slice at minor_axis label	`wp.minor_xs(val)`	DataFrame

For example, using the earlier example data, we could do:

In [599]: wp['Item1']
Out[599]: 
                   A         B         C         D
2000-01-01 -0.308853 -0.681087  0.377953  0.493672
2000-01-02 -2.461467 -1.553902  2.015523 -1.833722
2000-01-03  1.771740 -0.670027  0.049307 -0.521493
2000-01-04 -3.201750  0.792716  0.146111  1.903247
2000-01-05 -0.747169 -0.309038  0.393876  1.861468

In [600]: wp.major_xs(wp.major_axis[2])
Out[600]: 
      Item1     Item2      Item3
A  1.771740  0.077849  22.758618
B -0.670027  0.629498  -1.064382
C  0.049307 -1.035260  -0.047627
D -0.521493 -0.438229   1.190000

In [601]: wp.minor_axis
Out[601]: Index([A, B, C, D], dtype=object)

In [602]: wp.minor_xs('C')
Out[602]: 
               Item1     Item2     Item3
2000-01-01  0.377953 -2.655452 -0.142331
2000-01-02  2.015523 -1.184357 -1.701786
2000-01-03  0.049307 -1.035260 -0.047627
2000-01-04  0.146111 -1.139050 -0.128275
2000-01-05  0.393876 -0.649593 -0.606343

Squeezing

Another way to change the dimensionality of an object is to squeeze a 1-len object, similar to wp['Item1']

In [603]: wp.reindex(items=['Item1']).squeeze()
Out[603]: 
                   A         B         C         D
2000-01-01 -0.308853 -0.681087  0.377953  0.493672
2000-01-02 -2.461467 -1.553902  2.015523 -1.833722
2000-01-03  1.771740 -0.670027  0.049307 -0.521493
2000-01-04 -3.201750  0.792716  0.146111  1.903247
2000-01-05 -0.747169 -0.309038  0.393876  1.861468

In [604]: wp.reindex(items=['Item1'],minor=['B']).squeeze()
Out[604]: 
2000-01-01   -0.681087
2000-01-02   -1.553902
2000-01-03   -0.670027
2000-01-04    0.792716
2000-01-05   -0.309038
Freq: D, Name: B, dtype: float64

Conversion to DataFrame

A Panel can be represented in 2D form as a hierarchically indexed DataFrame. See the section hierarchical indexing for more on this. To convert a Panel to a DataFrame, use theto_frame method:

In [605]: panel = Panel(np.random.randn(3, 5, 4), items=['one', 'two', 'three'],
   .....:               major_axis=date_range('1/1/2000', periods=5),
   .....:               minor_axis=['a', 'b', 'c', 'd'])
   .....:

In [606]: panel.to_frame()
Out[606]: 
                       one       two     three
major      minor                              
2000-01-01 a     -0.390201  0.252462 -1.256860
           b      1.207122  1.500571  0.563637
           c      0.178690  1.053202 -2.417312
           d     -1.004168 -2.338595  0.972827
2000-01-02 a     -1.377627 -0.374279  0.041293
           b      0.499281 -2.359958  1.129659
           c     -1.405256 -1.157886  0.086926
           d      0.162565 -0.551865 -0.445645
2000-01-03 a     -0.067785  1.592673 -0.217503
           b     -1.260006  1.559318 -1.420361
           c     -1.132896  1.562443 -0.015601
           d     -2.006481  0.763264 -1.150641
2000-01-04 a      0.301016  0.162027 -0.798334
           b      0.059117 -0.902704 -0.557697
           c      1.138469  1.106010  0.381353
           d     -2.400634 -0.199234  1.337122
2000-01-05 a     -0.280853  0.458265 -1.531095
           b      0.025653  0.491048  1.331458
           c     -1.386071  0.128594 -0.571329
           d      0.863937  1.147862 -0.026671

Panel4D (Experimental)

Panel4D is a 4-Dimensional named container very much like a Panel, but having 4 named dimensions. It is intended as a test bed for more N-Dimensional named containers.

labels: axis 0, each item corresponds to a Panel contained inside

items: axis 1, each item corresponds to a DataFrame contained inside

major_axis: axis 2, it is the index (rows) of each of the DataFrames

minor_axis: axis 3, it is the columns of each of the DataFrames

Panel4D is a sub-class of Panel, so most methods that work on Panels are applicable to Panel4D. The following methods are disabled:

join , to_frame , to_excel , to_sparse , groupby

Construction of Panel4D works in a very similar manner to a Panel

From 4D ndarray with optional axis labels

In [607]: p4d = Panel4D(randn(2, 2, 5, 4),
   .....:            labels=['Label1','Label2'],
   .....:            items=['Item1', 'Item2'],
   .....:            major_axis=date_range('1/1/2000', periods=5),
   .....:            minor_axis=['A', 'B', 'C', 'D'])
   .....:

In [608]: p4d
Out[608]: 
<class 'pandas.core.panelnd.Panel4D'>
Dimensions: 2 (labels) x 2 (items) x 5 (major_axis) x 4 (minor_axis)
Labels axis: Label1 to Label2
Items axis: Item1 to Item2
Major_axis axis: 2000-01-01 00:00:00 to 2000-01-05 00:00:00
Minor_axis axis: A to D

From dict of Panel objects

In [609]: data = { 'Label1' : Panel({ 'Item1' : DataFrame(randn(4, 3)) }),
   .....:          'Label2' : Panel({ 'Item2' : DataFrame(randn(4, 2)) }) }
   .....:

In [610]: Panel4D(data)
Out[610]: 
<class 'pandas.core.panelnd.Panel4D'>
Dimensions: 2 (labels) x 2 (items) x 4 (major_axis) x 3 (minor_axis)
Labels axis: Label1 to Label2
Items axis: Item1 to Item2
Major_axis axis: 0 to 3
Minor_axis axis: 0 to 2

Note that the values in the dict need only be convertible to Panels. Thus, they can be any of the other valid inputs to Panel as per above.

Slicing

Slicing works in a similar manner to a Panel. [] slices the first dimension. .ix allows you to slice abitrarily and get back lower dimensional objects

In [611]: p4d['Label1']
Out[611]: 
<class 'pandas.core.panel.Panel'>
Dimensions: 2 (items) x 5 (major_axis) x 4 (minor_axis)
Items axis: Item1 to Item2
Major_axis axis: 2000-01-01 00:00:00 to 2000-01-05 00:00:00
Minor_axis axis: A to D

4D -> Panel

In [612]: p4d.ix[:,:,:,'A']
Out[612]: 
<class 'pandas.core.panel.Panel'>
Dimensions: 2 (items) x 2 (major_axis) x 5 (minor_axis)
Items axis: Label1 to Label2
Major_axis axis: Item1 to Item2
Minor_axis axis: 2000-01-01 00:00:00 to 2000-01-05 00:00:00

4D -> DataFrame

In [613]: p4d.ix[:,:,0,'A']
Out[613]: 
         Label1    Label2
Item1 -1.085663  0.399555
Item2 -0.685597 -1.624062

4D -> Series

In [614]: p4d.ix[:,0,0,'A']
Out[614]: 
Label1   -1.085663
Label2    0.399555
Name: A, dtype: float64

Transposing

A Panel4D can be rearranged using its transpose method (which does not make a copy by default unless the data are heterogeneous):

In [615]: p4d.transpose(3, 2, 1, 0)
Out[615]: 
<class 'pandas.core.panelnd.Panel4D'>
Dimensions: 4 (labels) x 5 (items) x 2 (major_axis) x 2 (minor_axis)
Labels axis: A to D
Items axis: 2000-01-01 00:00:00 to 2000-01-05 00:00:00
Major_axis axis: Item1 to Item2
Minor_axis axis: Label1 to Label2

PanelND (Experimental)

PanelND is a module with a set of factory functions to enable a user to construct N-dimensional named containers like Panel4D, with a custom set of axis labels. Thus a domain-specific container can easily be created.

The following creates a Panel5D. A new panel type object must be sliceable into a lower dimensional object. Here we slice to a Panel4D.

In [616]: from pandas.core import panelnd

In [617]: Panel5D = panelnd.create_nd_panel_factory(
   .....:     klass_name   = 'Panel5D',
   .....:     axis_orders  = [ 'cool', 'labels','items','major_axis','minor_axis'],
   .....:     axis_slices  = { 'labels' : 'labels', 'items' : 'items',
   .....:                      'major_axis' : 'major_axis', 'minor_axis' : 'minor_axis' },
   .....:     slicer       = Panel4D,
   .....:     axis_aliases = { 'major' : 'major_axis', 'minor' : 'minor_axis' },
   .....:     stat_axis    = 2)
   .....:

In [618]: p5d = Panel5D(dict(C1 = p4d))

In [619]: p5d
Out[619]: 
<class 'pandas.core.panelnd.Panel5D'>
Dimensions: 1 (cool) x 2 (labels) x 2 (items) x 5 (major_axis) x 4 (minor_axis)
Cool axis: C1 to C1
Labels axis: Label1 to Label2
Items axis: Item1 to Item2
Major_axis axis: 2000-01-01 00:00:00 to 2000-01-05 00:00:00
Minor_axis axis: A to D

# print a slice of our 5D
In [620]: p5d.ix['C1',:,:,0:3,:]
Out[620]: 
<class 'pandas.core.panelnd.Panel4D'>
Dimensions: 2 (labels) x 2 (items) x 3 (major_axis) x 4 (minor_axis)
Labels axis: Label1 to Label2
Items axis: Item1 to Item2
Major_axis axis: 2000-01-01 00:00:00 to 2000-01-03 00:00:00
Minor_axis axis: A to D

# transpose it
In [621]: p5d.transpose(1,2,3,4,0)
Out[621]: 
<class 'pandas.core.panelnd.Panel5D'>
Dimensions: 2 (cool) x 2 (labels) x 5 (items) x 4 (major_axis) x 1 (minor_axis)
Cool axis: Label1 to Label2
Labels axis: Item1 to Item2
Items axis: 2000-01-01 00:00:00 to 2000-01-05 00:00:00
Major_axis axis: A to D
Minor_axis axis: C1 to C1

# look at the shape & dim
In [622]: p5d.shape
Out[622]: [1, 2, 2, 5, 4]

In [623]: p5d.ndim
Out[623]: 5

Series

Series is ndarray-like

Series is dict-like

Vectorized operations and label alignment with Series

Name attribute

DataFrame

From dict of Series or dicts

From dict of ndarrays / lists

From structured or record array

From a list of dicts

From a Series

Alternate Constructors

Column selection, addition, deletion

Indexing / Selection

Data alignment and arithmetic

Transposing

DataFrame interoperability with NumPy functions

Console display

DataFrame column attribute access and IPython completion

Panel

From 3D ndarray with optional axis labels

From dict of DataFrame objects

From DataFrame using to_panel method

Item selection / addition / deletion

Transposing

Indexing / Selection

Squeezing

Conversion to DataFrame

Panel4D (Experimental)

From 4D ndarray with optional axis labels

From dict of Panel objects

Slicing

Transposing

PanelND (Experimental)

From DataFrame using `to_panel` method