Reshaping Data with pandas

Overview

Reshape DataFrames from a wide to long format, stack and unstack rows and columns, and wrangle multi-index DataFrames.

Often data is in a human-readable format, but it’s not suitable for data analysis. This is where pandas can help—it’s a powerful tool for reshaping DataFrames into different formats. In this course, you’ll grow your data scientist and analyst skills as you learn how to wrangle string columns and nested data contained in a DataFrame. You’ll work with real-world data, including FIFA player ratings, book reviews, and churn analysis data, as you learn how to reshape a DataFrame from wide to long format, stack and unstack rows and columns, and get descriptive statistics of a multi-index DataFrame.

Syllabus

Introduction to Data Reshaping

Let's start by understanding the concept of wide and long formats and the advantages of using each of them. You’ll then learn how to pivot data from long to a wide format, and get summary statistics from a large DataFrame.

Converting Between Wide and Long Format

Master the technique of reshaping DataFrames from wide to long format. In this chapter, you'll learn how to use the melting method and wide to long function before discovering how to handle string columns by concatenating or splitting them.

Stacking and Unstacking DataFrames

In this chapter, you’ll level-up your data manipulation skills using multi-level indexing. You'll learn how to reshape DataFrames by rearranging levels of the row indexes to the column axis, or vice versa. You'll also gain the skills you need to handle missing data generated in the stacking and unstacking processes.

Advanced Reshaping

You'll finish by learning how to combine the reshaping process with grouping to produce quick data manipulations. Lastly, you'll discover how to transform list-like columns and handle complex nested data, such as nested JSON files.