Pandas Brain Teasers: Exercise Your Mind

This book contains 25 short programs that will challenge your understanding of Pandas. Like any big project, the Pandas developers had to make some design decisions that at times seem surprising. This book uses those quirks as a teaching opportunity. By understanding the gaps in your knowledge, you’ll become better at what you do. Some of the teasers are from the author’s experience shipping bugs to production, and some from others doing the same. Teasers and puzzles are fun, and learning how to solve them can teach you to avoid programming mistakes and maybe even impress your colleagues and future employers.

Working with data is central to nearly everything we do, from disease contact tracing and analyzing health records to smart meters that track utility consumption behavior. With the power of Python’s pandas library, you can process and analyze this data in a highly efficient and simple-to-understand way. And with 25 brain teasers designed to turn this technology’s quirks into a teaching opportunity, you’ll be honing your data science skills while having fun at the same time.

Following a simple format, you’ll challenge yourself and your understanding of pandas. Read a short Python program that uses pandas, try to guess the output, run the code yourself, and then go to the next page for an explanation of the solution. From common pitfalls and hidden gotchas to unexpected twists and turns, you’ll deepen your understanding of pandas, learn to write more efficient code, and reduce the number of bugs in the software you develop. You may even impress your colleagues and your employers, both present and future.

Learn the tricks of the trade with Python’s pandas, in one of the most fun and creative ways around.

What You Need:

To run the code you’ll need Python version 3.8 or upper and Pandas version 1.0 or upper installed.

We use Python version 3.8.3 and Pandas version 1.0.5; the output might change in future versions.