Pandas Introduction

Pandas is a powerful and open-source library Python library for data manipulation and analysis, providing data structures and functions for efficient operations.

What is Pandas?

Pandas is a powerful and versatile library that simplifies tasks of data manipulation in Python . Pandas is built on top of the NumPy library and is particularly well-suited for working with tabular data, such as spreadsheets or SQL tables. Its versatility and ease of use make it an essential tool for data analysts, scientists, and engineers working with structured data in Python.

What can you do using Pandas?

Pandas are generally used for data science but have you wondered why? This is because pandas are used in conjunction with other libraries that are used for data science. It is built on the top of the NumPy library which means that a lot of structures of NumPy are used or replicated in Pandas. The data produced by Pandas are often used as input for plotting functions of Matplotlib, statistical analysis in SciPy, and machine learning algorithms in Scikit-learn. Here is a list of things that we can do using Pandas.

• Data set cleaning, merging, and joining.
• Easy handling of missing data (represented as NaN) in floating point as well as non-floating point data.
• Columns can be inserted and deleted from DataFrame and higher dimensional objects.
• Powerful group by functionality for performing split-apply-combine operations on data sets.
• Data Visulaization

Getting Started with Pandas

Installing Pandas

The first step of working in pandas is to ensure whether it is installed in the system or not.  If not then we need to install it in our system using the pip command. Type the cmd command in the search box and locate the folder using the cd command where python-pip file has been installed. After locating it, type the command:

pip install pandas

For more reference take a look at this article on installing pandas follows.

Importing Pandas

After the pandas have been installed into the system, you need to import the library. This module is generally imported as follows:

import pandas as pd

Here, pd is referred to as an alias to the Pandas. However, it is not necessary to import the library using the alias, it just helps in writing less amount code every time a method or property is called. 

Pandas Data Structures

Pandas generally provide two data structures for manipulating data, They are: 

• Series
• DataFrame

Pandas Series

A Pandas Series is a one-dimensional labeled array capable of holding data of any type (integer, string, float, python objects, etc.). The axis labels are collectively called indexes.
Pandas Series is nothing but a column in an Excel sheet. Labels need not be unique but must be a hashable type. The object supports both integer and label-based indexing and provides a host of methods for performing operations involving the index.

Series Data Frame

Note: For more information, refer to Python | Pandas Series

Creating a Series

In the real world, a Pandas Series will be created by loading the datasets from existing storage, storage can be SQL Database, CSV file, or an Excel file. Pandas Series can be created from lists, dictionaries, and from scalar values, etc.

Example:

Python3

import pandas as pd 
import numpy as np

# Creating empty series 
ser = pd.Series() 
print("Pandas Series: ", ser) 

# simple array 
data = np.array(['g', 'e', 'e', 'k', 's']) 
  
ser = pd.Series(data) 
print("Pandas Series:\n", ser)