Re-indexing in pandas is a process that makes the data in a Series conform to a set of labels. It is used by pandas to perform much of the alignment process and is hence a fundamental operation.
Re-indexing achieves several things:
- Re-ordering existing data to match a set of labels
- Inserting NaN markers where no data exists for a label
- Possibly filling missing data for a label using some type of logic (defaulting to adding NaN values)
Re-indexing can be as simple as simply assigning a new index to the .index property of a Series. The following demonstrates changing the index of a Series in this manner:
![](https://static.packt-cdn.com/products/9781787123137/graphics/assets/a2f6bef9-8b38-446c-9fe6-850fa154f378.png)
![](https://static.packt-cdn.com/products/9781787123137/graphics/assets/e3031e5c-8b53-4378-9887-1059d18e46d3.png)
The number of elements in the list being assigned to the .index property must match the number of rows or an exception will be thrown. Re-indexing also modified the Series in-place.
Flexibility in creating a new index is provided through use of the .reindex...