In [1]: import pandas as pd
- Titanic data
This tutorial uses the Titanic data set, stored as CSV. The data consists of the following data columns:
PassengerId: Id of every passenger.
Survived: Indication whether passenger survived.
0for yes and1for no.Pclass: One out of the 3 ticket classes: Class
1, Class2and Class3.Name: Name of passenger.
Sex: Gender of passenger.
Age: Age of passenger in years.
SibSp: Number of siblings or spouses aboard.
Parch: Number of parents or children aboard.
Ticket: Ticket number of passenger.
Fare: Indicating the fare.
Cabin: Cabin number of passenger.
Embarked: Port of embarkation.
In [2]: titanic = pd.read_csv("data/titanic.csv") In [3]: titanic.head() Out[3]: PassengerId Survived Pclass ... Fare Cabin Embarked 0 1 0 3 ... 7.2500 NaN S 1 2 1 1 ... 71.2833 C85 C 2 3 1 3 ... 7.9250 NaN S 3 4 1 1 ... 53.1000 C123 S 4 5 0 3 ... 8.0500 NaN S [5 rows x 12 columns]
How do I select a subset of a DataFrame?#
How do I select specific columns from a DataFrame?#
I’m interested in the age of the Titanic passengers.
In [4]: ages = titanic["Age"] In [5]: ages.head() Out[5]: 0 22.0 1 38.0 2 26.0 3 35.0 4 35.0 Name: Age, dtype: float64
To select a single column, use square brackets
[]with the column name of the column of interest.
Each column in a DataFrame is a Series. As a single column is
selected, the returned object is a pandas Series. We can verify this
by checking the type of the output:
In [6]: type(titanic["Age"])
Out[6]: pandas.core.series.Series
And have a look at the shape of the output:
In [7]: titanic["Age"].shape
Out[7]: (891,)
DataFrame.shape is an attribute (remember tutorial on reading and writing, do not use parentheses for attributes) of a
pandas Series and DataFrame containing the number of rows and
columns: (nrows, ncolumns). A pandas Series is 1-dimensional and only
the number of rows is returned.
I’m interested in the age and sex of the Titanic passengers.
In [8]: age_sex = titanic[["Age", "Sex"]] In [9]: age_sex.head() Out[9]: Age Sex 0 22.0 male 1 38.0 female 2 26.0 female 3 35.0 female 4 35.0 male
To select multiple columns, use a list of column names within the selection brackets
[].
Note
The inner square brackets define a
Python list with column names, whereas
the outer square brackets are used to select the data from a pandas
DataFrame as seen in the previous example.
The returned data type is a pandas DataFrame:
In [10]: type(titanic[["Age", "Sex"]])
Out[10]: pandas.DataFrame
In [11]: titanic[["Age", "Sex"]].shape
Out[11]: (891, 2)
The selection returned a DataFrame with 891 rows and 2 columns. Remember, a
DataFrame is 2-dimensional with both a row and column dimension.
For basic information on indexing, see the user guide section on indexing and selecting data.
How do I filter specific rows from a DataFrame?#
I’m interested in the passengers older than 35 years.
In [12]: above_35 = titanic[titanic["Age"] > 35] In [13]: above_35.head() Out[13]: PassengerId Survived Pclass ... Fare Cabin Embarked 1 2 1 1 ... 71.2833 C85 C 6 7 0 1 ... 51.8625 E46 S 11 12 1 1 ... 26.5500 C103 S 13 14 0 3 ... 31.2750 NaN S 15 16 1 2 ... 16.0000 NaN S [5 rows x 12 columns]
To select rows based on a conditional expression, use a condition inside the selection brackets
[].
The condition inside the selection
brackets titanic["Age"] > 35 checks for which rows the Age
column has a value larger than 35:
In [14]: titanic["Age"] > 35
Out[14]:
0 False
1 True
2 False
3 False
4 False
...
886 False
887 False
888 False
889 False
890 False
Name: Age, Length: 891, dtype: bool
The output of the conditional expression (>, but also ==,
!=, <, <=,… would work) is actually a pandas Series of
boolean values (either True or False) with the same number of
rows as the original DataFrame. Such a Series of boolean values
can be used to filter the DataFrame by putting it in between the
selection brackets []. Only rows for which the value is True
will be selected.
We know from before that the original Titanic DataFrame consists of
891 rows. Let’s have a look at the number of rows which satisfy the
condition by checking the shape attribute of the resulting
DataFrame above_35:
In [15]: above_35.shape
Out[15]: (217, 12)
I’m interested in the Titanic passengers from cabin class 2 and 3.
In [16]: class_23 = titanic[titanic["Pclass"].isin([2, 3])] In [17]: class_23.head() Out[17]: PassengerId Survived Pclass ... Fare Cabin Embarked 0 1 0 3 ... 7.2500 NaN S 2 3 1 3 ... 7.9250 NaN S 4 5 0 3 ... 8.0500 NaN S 5 6 0 3 ... 8.4583 NaN Q 7 8 0 3 ... 21.0750 NaN S [5 rows x 12 columns]
Similar to the conditional expression, the
isin()conditional function returns aTruefor each row the values are in the provided list. To filter the rows based on such a function, use the conditional function inside the selection brackets[]. In this case, the condition inside the selection bracketstitanic["Pclass"].isin([2, 3])checks for which rows thePclasscolumn is either 2 or 3.
The above is equivalent to filtering by rows for which the class is
either 2 or 3 and combining the two statements with an | (or)
operator:
In [18]: class_23 = titanic[(titanic["Pclass"] == 2) | (titanic["Pclass"] == 3)]
In [19]: class_23.head()
Out[19]:
PassengerId Survived Pclass ... Fare Cabin Embarked
0 1 0 3 ... 7.2500 NaN S
2 3 1 3 ... 7.9250 NaN S
4 5 0 3 ... 8.0500 NaN S
5 6 0 3 ... 8.4583 NaN Q
7 8 0 3 ... 21.0750 NaN S
[5 rows x 12 columns]
Note
When combining multiple conditional statements, each condition
must be surrounded by parentheses (). Moreover, you can not use
or/and but need to use the or operator | and the and
operator &.
See the dedicated section in the user guide about boolean indexing or about the isin function.
I want to work with passenger data for which the age is known.
In [20]: age_no_na = titanic[titanic["Age"].notna()] In [21]: age_no_na.head() Out[21]: PassengerId Survived Pclass ... Fare Cabin Embarked 0 1 0 3 ... 7.2500 NaN S 1 2 1 1 ... 71.2833 C85 C 2 3 1 3 ... 7.9250 NaN S 3 4 1 1 ... 53.1000 C123 S 4 5 0 3 ... 8.0500 NaN S [5 rows x 12 columns]
The
notna()conditional function returns aTruefor each row the values are not aNullvalue. As such, this can be combined with the selection brackets[]to filter the data table.
You might wonder what actually changed, as the first 5 lines are still the same values. One way to verify is to check if the shape has changed:
In [22]: age_no_na.shape
Out[22]: (714, 12)
For more dedicated functions on missing values, see the user guide section about handling missing data.
How do I select specific rows and columns from a DataFrame?#
I’m interested in the names of the passengers older than 35 years.
In [23]: adult_names = titanic.loc[titanic["Age"] > 35, "Name"] In [24]: adult_names.head() Out[24]: 1 Cumings, Mrs. John Bradley (Florence Briggs Th... 6 McCarthy, Mr. Timothy J 11 Bonnell, Miss. Elizabeth 13 Andersson, Mr. Anders Johan 15 Hewlett, Mrs. (Mary D Kingcome) Name: Name, dtype: object
In this case, a subset of both rows and columns is made in one go and just using selection brackets
[]is not sufficient anymore. Theloc/ilocoperators are required in front of the selection brackets[]. When usingloc/iloc, the part before the comma is the rows you want, and the part after the comma is the columns you want to select.
When using column names, row labels or a condition expression, use
the loc operator in front of the selection brackets []. For both
the part before and after the comma, you can use a single label, a list
of labels, a slice of labels, a conditional expression or a colon. Using
a colon specifies you want to select all rows or columns.
I’m interested in rows 10 till 25 and columns 3 to 5.
In [25]: titanic.iloc[9:25, 2:5] Out[25]: Pclass Name Sex 9 2 Nasser, Mrs. Nicholas (Adele Achem) female 10 3 Sandstrom, Miss. Marguerite Rut female 11 1 Bonnell, Miss. Elizabeth female 12 3 Saundercock, Mr. William Henry male 13 3 Andersson, Mr. Anders Johan male .. ... ... ... 20 2 Fynney, Mr. Joseph J male 21 2 Beesley, Mr. Lawrence male 22 3 McGowan, Miss. Anna "Annie" female 23 1 Sloper, Mr. William Thompson male 24 3 Palsson, Miss. Torborg Danira female [16 rows x 3 columns]
Again, a subset of both rows and columns is made in one go and just using selection brackets
[]is not sufficient anymore. When specifically interested in certain rows and/or columns based on their position in the table, use theilocoperator in front of the selection brackets[].
When selecting specific rows and/or columns with loc or iloc,
new values can be assigned to the selected data. For example, to assign
the name anonymous to the first 3 elements of the fourth column:
In [26]: titanic.iloc[0:3, 3] = "anonymous"
In [27]: titanic.head()
Out[27]:
PassengerId Survived Pclass ... Fare Cabin Embarked
0 1 0 3 ... 7.2500 NaN S
1 2 1 1 ... 71.2833 C85 C
2 3 1 3 ... 7.9250 NaN S
3 4 1 1 ... 53.1000 C123 S
4 5 0 3 ... 8.0500 NaN S
[5 rows x 12 columns]
See the user guide section on different choices for indexing to get more insight into the usage of loc and iloc.
REMEMBER
When selecting subsets of data, square brackets
[]are used.Inside these square brackets, you can use a single column/row label, a list of column/row labels, a slice of labels, a conditional expression or a colon.
Use
locfor label-based selection (using row/column names).Use
ilocfor position-based selection (using table positions).You can assign new values to a selection based on
loc/iloc.
A full overview of indexing is provided in the user guide pages on indexing and selecting data.