Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)¶
DataFrame memory usage¶
As of pandas version 0.15.0, the memory usage of a dataframe (including
the index) is shown when accessing the info method of a dataframe. A
configuration option, display.memory_usage (see Options and Settings),
specifies if the dataframe’s memory usage will be displayed when
invoking the df.info() method.
For example, the memory usage of the dataframe below is shown
when calling df.info():
In [1]: dtypes = ['int64', 'float64', 'datetime64[ns]', 'timedelta64[ns]',
...: 'complex128', 'object', 'bool']
...:
In [2]: n = 5000
In [3]: data = dict([ (t, np.random.randint(100, size=n).astype(t))
...: for t in dtypes])
...:
In [4]: df = pd.DataFrame(data)
In [5]: df['categorical'] = df['object'].astype('category')
In [6]: df.info()
<class 'pandas.core.frame.DataFrame'>
RangeIndex: 5000 entries, 0 to 4999
Data columns (total 8 columns):
bool 5000 non-null bool
complex128 5000 non-null complex128
datetime64[ns] 5000 non-null datetime64[ns]
float64 5000 non-null float64
int64 5000 non-null int64
object 5000 non-null object
timedelta64[ns] 5000 non-null timedelta64[ns]
categorical 5000 non-null category
dtypes: bool(1), category(1), complex128(1), datetime64[ns](1), float64(1), int64(1), object(1), timedelta64[ns](1)
memory usage: 289.1+ KB
The + symbol indicates that the true memory usage could be higher, because
pandas does not count the memory used by values in columns with
dtype=object.
New in version 0.17.1.
Passing memory_usage='deep' will enable a more accurate memory usage report,
that accounts for the full usage of the contained objects. This is optional
as it can be expensive to do this deeper introspection.
In [7]: df.info(memory_usage='deep')
<class 'pandas.core.frame.DataFrame'>
RangeIndex: 5000 entries, 0 to 4999
Data columns (total 8 columns):
bool 5000 non-null bool
complex128 5000 non-null complex128
datetime64[ns] 5000 non-null datetime64[ns]
float64 5000 non-null float64
int64 5000 non-null int64
object 5000 non-null object
timedelta64[ns] 5000 non-null timedelta64[ns]
categorical 5000 non-null category
dtypes: bool(1), category(1), complex128(1), datetime64[ns](1), float64(1), int64(1), object(1), timedelta64[ns](1)
memory usage: 425.6 KB
By default the display option is set to True but can be explicitly
overridden by passing the memory_usage argument when invoking df.info().
The memory usage of each column can be found by calling the memory_usage
method. This returns a Series with an index represented by column names
and memory usage of each column shown in bytes. For the dataframe above,
the memory usage of each column and the total memory usage of the
dataframe can be found with the memory_usage method:
In [8]: df.memory_usage()
Out[8]:
Index 80
bool 5000
complex128 80000
datetime64[ns] 40000
float64 40000
int64 40000
object 40000
timedelta64[ns] 40000
categorical 10920
dtype: int64
# total memory usage of dataframe
In [9]: df.memory_usage().sum()
Out[9]: 296000
By default the memory usage of the dataframe’s index is shown in the
returned Series, the memory usage of the index can be suppressed by passing
the index=False argument:
In [10]: df.memory_usage(index=False)
Out[10]:
bool 5000
complex128 80000
datetime64[ns] 40000
float64 40000
int64 40000
object 40000
timedelta64[ns] 40000
categorical 10920
dtype: int64
The memory usage displayed by the info method utilizes the
memory_usage method to determine the memory usage of a dataframe
while also formatting the output in human-readable units (base-2
representation; i.e., 1KB = 1024 bytes).
See also Categorical Memory Usage.
Using If/Truth Statements with pandas¶
pandas follows the numpy convention of raising an error when you try to convert something to a bool.
This happens in a if or when using the boolean operations, and, or, or not. It is not clear
what the result of
>>> if pd.Series([False, True, False]):
...
should be. Should it be True because it’s not zero-length? False because there are False values?
It is unclear, so instead, pandas raises a ValueError:
>>> if pd.Series([False, True, False]):
print("I was true")
Traceback
...
ValueError: The truth value of an array is ambiguous. Use a.empty, a.any() or a.all().
If you see that, you need to explicitly choose what you want to do with it (e.g., use any(), all() or empty).
or, you might want to compare if the pandas object is None
>>> if pd.Series([False, True, False]) is not None:
print("I was not None")
>>> I was not None
or return if any value is True.
>>> if pd.Series([False, True, False]).any():
print("I am any")
>>> I am any
To evaluate single-element pandas objects in a boolean context, use the method .bool():
In [11]: pd.Series([True]).bool()
Out[11]: True
In [12]: pd.Series([False]).bool()
Out[12]: False
In [13]: pd.DataFrame([[True]]).bool()
Out[13]: True
In [14]: pd.DataFrame([[False]]).bool()
Out[14]: False
Bitwise boolean¶
Bitwise boolean operators like == and != will return a boolean Series,
which is almost always what you want anyways.
>>> s = pd.Series(range(5))
>>> s == 4
0 False
1 False
2 False
3 False
4 True
dtype: bool
See boolean comparisons for more examples.
Using the in operator¶
Using the Python in operator on a Series tests for membership in the
index, not membership among the values.
If this behavior is surprising, keep in mind that using in on a Python
dictionary tests keys, not values, and Series are dict-like.
To test for membership in the values, use the method isin():
For DataFrames, likewise, in applies to the column axis,
testing for membership in the list of column names.
NaN, Integer NA values and NA type promotions¶
Choice of NA representation¶
For lack of NA (missing) support from the ground up in NumPy and Python in
general, we were given the difficult choice between either
- A masked array solution: an array of data and an array of boolean values indicating whether a value
- Using a special sentinel value, bit pattern, or set of sentinel values to
denote
NAacross the dtypes
For many reasons we chose the latter. After years of production use it has
proven, at least in my opinion, to be the best decision given the state of
affairs in NumPy and Python in general. The special value NaN
(Not-A-Number) is used everywhere as the NA value, and there are API
functions isnull and notnull which can be used across the dtypes to
detect NA values.
However, it comes with it a couple of trade-offs which I most certainly have not ignored.
Support for integer NA¶
In the absence of high performance NA support being built into NumPy from
the ground up, the primary casualty is the ability to represent NAs in integer
arrays. For example:
In [15]: s = pd.Series([1, 2, 3, 4, 5], index=list('abcde'))
In [16]: s
Out[16]:
a 1
b 2
c 3
d 4
e 5
dtype: int64
In [17]: s.dtype
Out[17]: dtype('int64')
In [18]: s2 = s.reindex(['a', 'b', 'c', 'f', 'u'])
In [19]: s2
Out[19]:
a 1.0
b 2.0
c 3.0
f NaN
u NaN
dtype: float64
In [20]: s2.dtype
Out[20]: dtype('float64')
This trade-off is made largely for memory and performance reasons, and also so
that the resulting Series continues to be “numeric”. One possibility is to use
dtype=object arrays instead.
NA type promotions¶
When introducing NAs into an existing Series or DataFrame via reindex or
some other means, boolean and integer types will be promoted to a different
dtype in order to store the NAs. These are summarized by this table:
| Typeclass | Promotion dtype for storing NAs |
|---|---|
floating |
no change |
object |
no change |
integer |
cast to float64 |
boolean |
cast to object |
While this may seem like a heavy trade-off, I have found very few cases where this is an issue in practice. Some explanation for the motivation here in the next section.
Why not make NumPy like R?¶
Many people have suggested that NumPy should simply emulate the NA support
present in the more domain-specific statistical programming language R. Part of the reason is the NumPy type hierarchy:
| Typeclass | Dtypes |
|---|---|
numpy.floating |
float16, float32, float64, float128 |
numpy.integer |
int8, int16, int32, int64 |
numpy.unsignedinteger |
uint8, uint16, uint32, uint64 |
numpy.object_ |
object_ |
numpy.bool_ |
bool_ |
numpy.character |
string_, unicode_ |
The R language, by contrast, only has a handful of built-in data types:
integer, numeric (floating-point), character, and
boolean. NA types are implemented by reserving special bit patterns for
each type to be used as the missing value. While doing this with the full NumPy
type hierarchy would be possible, it would be a more substantial trade-off
(especially for the 8- and 16-bit data types) and implementation undertaking.
An alternate approach is that of using masked arrays. A masked array is an
array of data with an associated boolean mask denoting whether each value
should be considered NA or not. I am personally not in love with this
approach as I feel that overall it places a fairly heavy burden on the user and
the library implementer. Additionally, it exacts a fairly high performance cost
when working with numerical data compared with the simple approach of using
NaN. Thus, I have chosen the Pythonic “practicality beats purity” approach
and traded integer NA capability for a much simpler approach of using a
special value in float and object arrays to denote NA, and promoting
integer arrays to floating when NAs must be introduced.
Differences with NumPy¶
For Series and DataFrame objects, var normalizes by N-1 to produce
unbiased estimates of the sample variance, while NumPy’s var normalizes
by N, which measures the variance of the sample. Note that cov
normalizes by N-1 in both pandas and NumPy.
Thread-safety¶
As of pandas 0.11, pandas is not 100% thread safe. The known issues relate to
the DataFrame.copy method. If you are doing a lot of copying of DataFrame
objects shared among threads, we recommend holding locks inside the threads
where the data copying occurs.
See this link for more information.
Byte-Ordering Issues¶
Occasionally you may have to deal with data that were created on a machine with a different byte order than the one on which you are running Python. A common symptom of this issue is an error like
Traceback
...
ValueError: Big-endian buffer not supported on little-endian compiler
To deal with this issue you should convert the underlying NumPy array to the native system byte order before passing it to Series/DataFrame/Panel constructors using something similar to the following:
In [21]: x = np.array(list(range(10)), '>i4') # big endian
In [22]: newx = x.byteswap().newbyteorder() # force native byteorder
In [23]: s = pd.Series(newx)
See the NumPy documentation on byte order for more details.