Working with time deltas
When working with time-series data, you may need to perform some calculations on your datetime
columns, such as adding or subtracting. Examples can include adding 30 days to purchase datetime
to determine when the return policy expires for a product or when a warranty ends. For example, the Timedelta
class makes it possible to derive new datetime
objects by adding or subtracting at different ranges or increments, such as seconds, daily, and weekly. This includes time zone-aware calculations.
In this recipe, you will explore two practical approaches in pandas to capture date/time differences – the pandas.Timedelta
class and the pandas.to_timedelta
function.
How to do it…
In this recipe, you will work with hypothetical sales data for a retail store. You will generate the sales DataFrame, which will contain items purchased from the store and the purchase date. You will then explore different scenarios using the Timedelta
class and the to_timedelta...