What's the difference between df.head() and df.head?

Question

In Jupyter Notebook or terminal, both df.head and df.head() can return an output of the dataframe, with some minor differences. What's the fundamental difference between the two different expressions and what role does parenthesis play in Python in general? Thanks!

>>>df.head
<bound method NDFrame.head of          Date    Open    High     Low   Close    Volume
0    1-Jun-17  153.17  153.33  152.22  153.18  16404088
1    2-Jun-17  153.58  155.45  152.89  155.45  27770715
2    5-Jun-17  154.34  154.45  153.46  153.93  25331662
3    6-Jun-17  153.90  155.81  153.78  154.45  26624926
4    7-Jun-17  155.02  155.98  154.48  155.37  21069647
5    8-Jun-17  155.25  155.54  154.40  154.99  21250798
6    9-Jun-17  155.19  155.19  146.02  148.98  64882657
7   12-Jun-17  145.74  146.09  142.51  145.42  72307330
8   13-Jun-17  147.16  147.45  145.15  146.59  34165445
9   14-Jun-17  147.50  147.50  143.84  145.16  31531232
10  15-Jun-17  143.32  144.48  142.21  144.29  32165373
>>> df.head()
       Date    Open    High     Low   Close    Volume
0  1-Jun-17  153.17  153.33  152.22  153.18  16404088
1  2-Jun-17  153.58  155.45  152.89  155.45  27770715
2  5-Jun-17  154.34  154.45  153.46  153.93  25331662
3  6-Jun-17  153.90  155.81  153.78  154.45  26624926
4  7-Jun-17  155.02  155.98  154.48  155.37  21069647

Answer 1

Those aren't just "minor differences". You didn't actually take the head at all with df.head.

df.head() actually takes the head of the dataframe. You can see that the output only has 5 rows:

>>> df.head()
       Date    Open    High     Low   Close    Volume
0  1-Jun-17  153.17  153.33  152.22  153.18  16404088
1  2-Jun-17  153.58  155.45  152.89  155.45  27770715
2  5-Jun-17  154.34  154.45  153.46  153.93  25331662
3  6-Jun-17  153.90  155.81  153.78  154.45  26624926
4  7-Jun-17  155.02  155.98  154.48  155.37  21069647

In contrast, df.head is just a method object for the head method of the dataframe df. The parentheses are needed to actually call the method. The method object's repr is basically

f"<bound method {classname}.{methodname} of {object!r}"

with the class name, method name, and repr of the object substituted in the appropriate places. The part of the output that looks like a dataframe is, in fact, the repr of the original df. It has 10 rows instead of 5 because it's the whole original dataframe, not the head.