Pandas#

Learning Pandas#

The best way to learn Pandas (as an Excel practitioner):

  • Pandas is the de-facto standard library for working with tabular data in Python

  • I learned Pandas by replicating my work from Excel and other spreadsheet-based software (has anyone used JMP before?)

  • “Transfer Learning”: Once you know how Excel maps to Pandas, you transfer your wealth of Excel knowledge directly into Pandas. These are transferrable skills!

  • Ensures you’re doing the correct thing by comparing outputs of operations between Excel and Pandas. It boosted my confidence a lot in the initial days!

  • Learn Python while automating your work!

pip install pandas

📖 Pandas for Excel practitioners: Link

Sample data: Link

Pandas Plotly Backend#

👉 It’s no secret that I love Plotly for plotting in Python! I’ve always found Matplotlib unnecessarily complex and verbose for my everyday data analysis & plotting needs. In addition to the interactivity, Plotly produces visually attractive and professional-looking plots out of the box!

🙊 However, I’ve been living with Matplotlib since I heavily use Pandas, and sometimes it’s just convenient to use the built-in Matplotlib plots that Pandas provides.

🥳 Imagine my joy today when I learned that we could change the Pandas default to plot with Plotly instead of Matplotlib with just one line of code!

Now, I just wish to make this somehow the default when importing Pandas! 😊

📝 Official Documentation: Pandas Plotting Backend

🌟 Demo notebook: Kaggle