Series is a one-dimensional array, which can hold any type of data, such as integers, floats, strings, and Python objects too. A series can be created by calling the following:

>>> import pandas as pd
>>> pd.Series(np.random.randn(5))

0 0.733810
1 -1.274658
2 -1.602298
3 0.460944
4 -0.632756
dtype: float64

The random.randn parameter is part of the NumPy package and it generates random numbers. The series function creates a pandas series that consists of an index, which is the first column, and the second column consists of random values. At the bottom of the output is the datatype of the series.

The index of the series can be customized by calling the following:

>>> pd.Series(np.random.randn(5), index=['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e'])

a -0.929494
b -0.571423
c -1.197866
d 0.081107
e -0.035091
dtype: float64

A series can be derived from a Python dict too:

>>> d = {'A': 10, 'B': 20, 'C': 30}
>>> pd.Series(d)

A 10
B 20
C 30
dtype: int64

DataFrame is a 2D data structure with columns that can be of different datatypes. It can be seen as a table. A DataFrame can be formed from the following data structures:

A DataFrame can be created from a dict of series by calling the following commands:

>>> d = {'c1': pd.Series(['A', 'B', 'C']),
 'c2': pd.Series([1, 2., 3., 4.])}
>>> df = pd.DataFrame(d)
>>> df

 c1 c2
0 A 1
1 B 2
2 C 3
3 NaN 4

The DataFrame can be created using a dict of lists too:

>>> d = {'c1': ['A', 'B', 'C', 'D'],
 'c2': [1, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0]}
>>> df = pd.DataFrame(d)
>>> print df
 c1 c2
0 A 1
1 B 2
2 C 3
3 D 4

A Panel is a data structure that handles 3D data. The following command is an example of panel data:

>>> d = {'Item1': pd.DataFrame(np.random.randn(4, 3)),
 'Item2': pd.DataFrame(np.random.randn(4, 2))}
>>> pd.Panel(d)

<class 'pandas.core.panel.Panel'>
Dimensions: 2 (items) x 4 (major_axis) x 3 (minor_axis)
Items axis: Item1 to Item2
Major_axis axis: 0 to 3
Minor_axis axis: 0 to 2

The preceding command shows that there are 2 DataFrames represented by two items. There are four rows represented by four major axes and three columns represented by three minor axes.

To read data from a .csv file, the following read_csv function can be used:

>>> d = pd.read_csv('Data/Student_Weight_Status_Category_Reporting_Results__Beginning_2010.csv')
>>> d[0:5]['AREA NAME']

0 RAVENA COEYMANS SELKIRK CENTRAL SCHOOL DISTRICT
1 RAVENA COEYMANS SELKIRK CENTRAL SCHOOL DISTRICT
2 RAVENA COEYMANS SELKIRK CENTRAL SCHOOL DISTRICT
3 COHOES CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT
4 COHOES CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT

The read_csv function takes the path of the .csv file to input the data. The command after this prints the first five rows of the Location column in the data.

To write a data to the .csv file, the following to_csv function can be used:

>>> d = {'c1': pd.Series(['A', 'B', 'C']),
 'c2': pd.Series([1, 2., 3., 4.])}
>>> df = pd.DataFrame(d)
>>> df.to_csv('sample_data.csv')

The DataFrame is written to a .csv file by using the to_csv method. The path and the filename where the file needs to be created should be mentioned.

In addition to the pandas package, the xlrd package needs to be installed for pandas to read the data from an Excel file:

>>> d=pd.read_excel('Data/Student_Weight_Status_Category_Reporting_Results__Beginning_2010.xls')

The preceding function is similar to the CSV reading command. To write to an Excel file, the xlwt package needs to be installed:

>>> df.to_excel('sample_data.xls')

To read the data from a JSON file, Python's standard json package can be used. The following commands help in reading the file:

>>> import json
>>> json_data = open('Data/Student_Weight_Status_Category_Reporting_Results__Beginning_2010.json')
>>> data = json.load(json_data)
>>> json_data.close()

In the preceding command, the open() function opens a connection to the file. The json.load() function loads the data into Python. The json_data.close() function closes the connection to the file.

The pandas library also provides a function to read the JSON file, which can be accessed using pd.read_json().

To read data from a database, the following function can be used:

>>> pd.read_sql_table(table_name, con)

The preceding command generates a DataFrame. If a table name and an SQLAlchemy engine are given, they return a DataFrame. This function does not support the DBAPI connection. The following are the description of the parameters used:

The following command reads SQL query into a DataFrame:

>>> pd.read_sql_query(sql, con)

The following are the description of the parameters used: