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    In [1]: import pandas as pd

Data used for this tutorial:

- 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. `0` for no and `1` for yes.

  - Pclass: One out of the 3 ticket classes: Class `1`, Class `2` and Class `3`.

  - 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.

  To raw data

# How do I read and write tabular data?

- I want to analyze the Titanic passenger data, available as a CSV file.

      In [2]: titanic = pd.read_csv("data/titanic.csv")

  pandas provides the `read_csv()` function to read data stored as a csv file into a pandas `DataFrame`. pandas supports many different file formats or data sources out of the box (csv, excel, sql, json, parquet, …), each of them with the prefix `read_*`.

Make sure to always have a check on the data after reading in the data. When displaying a `DataFrame`, the first and last 5 rows will be shown by default:

    In [3]: titanic
    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
    ..           ...       ...     ...  ...      ...   ...       ...
    886          887         0       2  ...  13.0000   NaN         S
    887          888         1       1  ...  30.0000   B42         S
    888          889         0       3  ...  23.4500   NaN         S
    889          890         1       1  ...  30.0000  C148         C
    890          891         0       3  ...   7.7500   NaN         Q

    [891 rows x 12 columns]

- I want to see the first 8 rows of a pandas DataFrame.

      In [4]: titanic.head(8)
      Out[4]:
         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            6         0       3  ...   8.4583   NaN         Q
      6            7         0       1  ...  51.8625   E46         S
      7            8         0       3  ...  21.0750   NaN         S

      [8 rows x 12 columns]

  To see the first N rows of a `DataFrame`, use the `head()` method with the required number of rows (in this case 8) as argument.

Note

Interested in the last N rows instead? pandas also provides a `tail()` method. For example, `titanic.tail(10)` will return the last 10 rows of the DataFrame.

A check on how pandas interpreted each of the column data types can be done by requesting the pandas `dtypes` attribute:

    In [5]: titanic.dtypes
    Out[5]:
    PassengerId      int64
    Survived         int64
    Pclass           int64
    Name               str
    Sex                str
    Age            float64
    SibSp            int64
    Parch            int64
    Ticket             str
    Fare           float64
    Cabin              str
    Embarked           str
    dtype: object

For each of the columns, the used data type is enlisted. The data types in this `DataFrame` are integers (`int64`), floats (`float64`) and strings (`object`).

Note

When asking for the `dtypes`, no parentheses `()` are used! `dtypes` is an attribute of a `DataFrame` and `Series`. Attributes of a `DataFrame` or `Series` do not need `()`. Attributes represent a characteristic of a `DataFrame`/`Series`, whereas methods (which require parentheses `()`) do something with the `DataFrame`/`Series` as introduced in the first tutorial.

- My colleague requested the Titanic data as a spreadsheet.

  Note

  If you want to use `to_excel()` and `read_excel()`, you need to install an Excel reader as outlined in the Excel files section of the installation documentation.

      In [6]: titanic.to_excel("titanic.xlsx", sheet_name="passengers", index=False)

  Whereas `read_*` functions are used to read data to pandas, the `to_*` methods are used to store data. The `to_excel()` method stores the data as an excel file. In the example here, the `sheet_name` is named passengers instead of the default Sheet1. By setting `index=False` the row index labels are not saved in the spreadsheet.

The equivalent read function `read_excel()` will reload the data to a `DataFrame`:

    In [7]: titanic = pd.read_excel("titanic.xlsx", sheet_name="passengers")

    In [8]: titanic.head()
    Out[8]:
       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]

- I’m interested in a technical summary of a `DataFrame`

      In [9]: titanic.info()
      <class 'pandas.DataFrame'>
      RangeIndex: 891 entries, 0 to 890
      Data columns (total 12 columns):
       #   Column       Non-Null Count  Dtype
      ---  ------       --------------  -----
       0   PassengerId  891 non-null    int64
       1   Survived     891 non-null    int64
       2   Pclass       891 non-null    int64
       3   Name         891 non-null    str
       4   Sex          891 non-null    str
       5   Age          714 non-null    float64
       6   SibSp        891 non-null    int64
       7   Parch        891 non-null    int64
       8   Ticket       891 non-null    str
       9   Fare         891 non-null    float64
       10  Cabin        204 non-null    str
       11  Embarked     889 non-null    str
      dtypes: float64(2), int64(5), str(5)
      memory usage: 118.7 KB

  The method `info()` provides technical information about a `DataFrame`, so let’s explain the output in more detail:

  - It is indeed a `DataFrame`.

  - There are 891 entries, i.e. 891 rows.

  - Each row has a row label (aka the `index`) with values ranging from 0 to 890.

  - The table has 12 columns. Most columns have a value for each of the rows (all 891 values are `non-null`). Some columns do have missing values and less than 891 `non-null` values.

  - The columns `Name`, `Sex`, `Cabin` and `Embarked` consist of textual data (strings, aka `object`). The other columns are numerical data, some of them are whole numbers (`integer`) and others are real numbers (`float`).

  - The kind of data (characters, integers, …) in the different columns are summarized by listing the `dtypes`.

  - The approximate amount of RAM used to hold the DataFrame is provided as well.

#### REMEMBER

- Getting data in to pandas from many different file formats or data sources is supported by `read_*` functions.

- Exporting data out of pandas is provided by different `to_*` methods.

- The `head`/`tail`/`info` methods and the `dtypes` attribute are convenient for a first check.

To user guide

For a complete overview of the input and output possibilities from and to pandas, see the user guide section about reader and writer functions.