10.5 Exploring Pandas for Data Analysis
Pandas is a widely used open-source data analysis and manipulation library for the Python programming language. It is known for its high-performance and user-friendly data structures and tools, which make it an essential tool in the scientific computing toolkit.
One of the many reasons why Pandas is so popular is that it is built on top of two core Python libraries, Matplotlib and NumPy. Matplotlib is used for data visualization, while NumPy is used for mathematical operations. Together, these libraries provide a powerful combination of data manipulation and analysis capabilities.
The key data structure in Pandas is the DataFrame, which is similar to a relational data table with rows and columns. The DataFrame is a two-dimensional, size-mutable, tabular data structure with columns that can be of different data types, including integers, floating-point numbers, and strings. It also provides powerful indexing and selection tools that allow you...