Filter pandas dataframe rows by multiple column values

Question

I have a pandas dataframe containing rows with numbered columns:

    1  2  3  4  5
a   0  0  0  0  1
b   1  1  2  1  9             
c   2  2  2  2  2
d   5  5  5  5  5
e   8  9  9  9  9

How can I filter out the rows where a subset of columns are all above or below a certain value?

So, for example: I want to remove all rows where columns 1 to 3 all values are not > 3. In the above, that would leave me with only rows d and e.

The columns I am filtering and the value I am checking against are both arguments.

I've tried a few things, this is the closest I've gotten:

df[df[range(1,3)]>3]

Any ideas?

Answer 1

I used loc and all in this function:

def filt(df, cols, thresh):
    return df.loc[(df[cols] > thresh).all(axis=1)]

filt(df, [1, 2, 3], 3)

   1  2  3  4  5
d  5  5  5  5  5
e  8  9  9  9  9

Answer 2

You can achieve this without using apply:

In [73]:
df[(df.ix[:,0:3] > 3).all(axis=1)]

Out[73]:
   1  2  3  4  5
d  5  5  5  5  5
e  8  9  9  9  9

So this slices the df to just the first 3 columns using ix and then we compare against the scalar 3 and then call all(axis=1) to create a boolean series to mask the index