How Pandas handle different varieties of data?
How Pandas handle different varieties of data?
Pandas is one of the packages of python language which offers powerful and expressive data structures which make data manipulations and their analysis quite easy, among other things. Data type in a programming language is used to understand how the data should be stored and manipulated. Pandas basically have a few data types such as an object, int64, float64, datetime64, bool, etc. By default, integer types are int64 and float type is float64. For date time-related data, Pandas have datetime64.
Pandas usually use the object data type when it is dealing with strings. An object data type is also assigned when data in a particular column is of mixed type. It can be found that object data types actually contains multiple data types in them. A column may have integers, float and string and will be collectively labeled as an object. For such mixed data types in object columns, additional techniques may be required to handle them.
In order to convert data type in pandas, we can use astype() function or make custom function to convert them or maybe use to_numeric( ) to to_datetime( ) functions. The simplest way of them is to use the astype( ), but will work only if that data is clean and can be interpreted as a number or if you want to convert a numeric value to a string object. If it has a non-numeric character, then astype( ) will not be a good choice.
The implementation of data conversions using astype( ) and custom functions can be included in the early stages of data intake processes. The dtype or converter function can be applied only once in a specified column using this approach, if not, the dtype will be skipped.
One of the first steps that you do when receiving a new dataset is to make sure the data types are set right. Pandas on their own make fairly reasonable inferences, but we should know how to use various data conversion options available in pandas if such a scenario comes up.
This topic is very useful for people who are new to Python and Pandas. Data Science training in Kerala helps to get started with various datasets and provides a great way to practice what we have learned. But nothing is complete without practice and guidance. Choose the right Data Science training in Kochi to start your career as Data Scientist.
