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Python Data Analysis Library¶
pandas is an open source, BSD-licensed library providing high-performance, easy-to-use data structures and data analysis tools for the Python programming language.
pandas is a NUMFocus sponsored project. This will help ensure the success of development of pandas as a world-class open-source project.
0.19.0 Final (October 2, 2016)¶
This is a major release from 0.18.1 and includes number of API changes, several new features, enhancements, and performance improvements along with a large number of bug fixes. We recommend that all users upgrade to this version.
Highlights include:
- merge_asof() for asof-style time-series joining, see here
- .rolling() is now time-series aware, see here
- read_csv() now supports parsing Categorical data, see here
- A function union_categorical() has been added for combining categoricals, see here
- PeriodIndex now has its own period dtype, and changed to be more consistent with other Index classes. See here
- Sparse data structures gained enhanced support of int and bool dtypes, see here
- Comparison operations with Series no longer ignores the index, see here for an overview of the API changes.
- Introduction of a pandas development API for utility functions, see here.
- Deprecation of Panel4D and PanelND. We recommend to represent these types of n-dimensional data with the xarray package.
- Removal of the previously deprecated modules pandas.io.data, pandas.io.wb, pandas.tools.rplot.
See the Whatsnew overview for an extensive list of all enhancements and bugs that have been fixed in 0.19.0. Please report any issues here
Best way to Install¶
Best way to get pandas is to install via conda Builds for osx-64,linux-64,linux-32,win-64,win-32 for Python 2.7, Python 3.4, and Python 3.5 are all available.
conda install pandas
Quick vignette¶
10-minute tour of pandas from Wes McKinney on Vimeo.
What problem does pandas solve?¶
Python has long been great for data munging and preparation, but less so for data analysis and modeling. pandas helps fill this gap, enabling you to carry out your entire data analysis workflow in Python without having to switch to a more domain specific language like R.
Combined with the excellent IPython toolkit and other libraries, the environment for doing data analysis in Python excels in performance, productivity, and the ability to collaborate.
pandas does not implement significant modeling functionality outside of linear and panel regression; for this, look to statsmodels and scikit-learn. More work is still needed to make Python a first class statistical modeling environment, but we are well on our way toward that goal.
What do our users have to say?¶
“pandas allows us to focus more on research and less on programming. We have found pandas easy to learn, easy to use, and easy to maintain. The bottom line is that it has increased our productivity.”
“pandas is the perfect tool for bridging the gap between rapid iterations of ad-hoc analysis and production quality code. If you want one tool to be used across a multi-disciplined organization of engineers, mathematicians and analysts, look no further.”
“We use pandas to process time series data on our production servers. The simplicity and elegance of its API, and its high level of performance for high-volume datasets, made it a perfect choice for us.”
Library Highlights¶
- A fast and efficient DataFrame object for data manipulation with integrated indexing;
- Tools for reading and writing data between in-memory data structures and different formats: CSV and text files, Microsoft Excel, SQL databases, and the fast HDF5 format;
- Intelligent data alignment and integrated handling of missing data: gain automatic label-based alignment in computations and easily manipulate messy data into an orderly form;
- Flexible reshaping and pivoting of data sets;
- Intelligent label-based slicing, fancy indexing, and subsetting of large data sets;
- Columns can be inserted and deleted from data structures for size mutability;
- Aggregating or transforming data with a powerful group by engine allowing split-apply-combine operations on data sets;
- High performance merging and joining of data sets;
- Hierarchical axis indexing provides an intuitive way of working with high-dimensional data in a lower-dimensional data structure;
- Time series-functionality: date range generation and frequency conversion, moving window statistics, moving window linear regressions, date shifting and lagging. Even create domain-specific time offsets and join time series without losing data;
- Highly optimized for performance, with critical code paths written in Cython or C.
- Python with pandas is in use in a wide variety of academic and commercial domains, including Finance, Neuroscience, Economics, Statistics, Advertising, Web Analytics, and more.
