Efficiently processing DataFrame rows with a Python function?

Question

In many places in our Pandas-using code, we have some Python function process(row). That function is used over DataFrame.iterrows(), taking each row, and doing some processing, and returning a value, which we ultimate collect into a new Series.

I realize this usage pattern circumvents most of the performance benefits of the numpy / Pandas stack.

1. What would be the best way to make this usage pattern as efficient as possible?
2. Can we possibly do it without rewriting most of our code?

Another aspect of this question: can all such functions be converted to a numpy-efficient representation? I've much to learn about the numpy / scipy / Pandas stack, but it seems that for truly arbitrary logic, you may sometimes need to just use a slow pure Python architecture like the one above. Is that the case?

Answer 1

You should apply your function along the axis=1. Function will receive a row as an argument, and anything it returns will be collected into a new series object

df.apply(you_function, axis=1)

Example:

>>> df = pd.DataFrame({'a': np.arange(3),
                       'b': np.random.rand(3)})
>>> df
   a         b
0  0  0.880075
1  1  0.143038
2  2  0.795188
>>> def func(row):
        return row['a'] + row['b']
>>> df.apply(func, axis=1)
0    0.880075
1    1.143038
2    2.795188
dtype: float64

As for the second part of the question: row wise operations, even optimised ones, using pandas apply, are not the fastest solution there is. They are certainly a lot faster than a python for loop, but not the fastest. You can test that by timing operations and you'll see the difference.

Some operation could be converted to column oriented ones (one in my example could be easily converted to just df['a'] + df['b']), but others cannot. Especially if you have a lot of branching, special cases or other logic that should be perform on your row. In that case, if the apply is too slow for you, I would suggest "Cython-izing" your code. Cython plays really nicely with the NumPy C api and will give you the maximal speed you can achieve.

Or you can try numba. :)