What is pandas? — Master Data Analysis with Python Chapter 1

This is the first chapter from the book Master Data Analysis with Python, a comprehensive guide to mastering pandas that will help you produce trusted data analysis results in a professional environment. There are 80 chapters, 500+ exercises with detailed solutions, videos, and multiple certification exams available. Get access to the first 100 pages of the book for free here.

Chapter 1 — What is pandas?

pandas is one of the most popular open source data exploration libraries currently available. It gives its users the power to explore, query, transform, aggregate, and visualize tabular data. Tabular refers to data that is two-dimensional, consisting of rows and columns. Commonly, we refer to this organized structure of data as a table. pandas is the tool that we will use to analyze data in nearly every chapter of this book.

Why pandas and not xyz?

In this current age of data explosion, there are now dozens of other tools that have many of the same capabilities as the pandas library. However, there are many aspects of pandas that make it an attractive choice for data…