Selecting a column

Selected a single column from a DataFrame returns a Series (that has the same index as the DataFrame). It is a single dimension of data, composed of just an index and the data. You can also create a Series by itself without a DataFrame, but it is more common to pull them off of a DataFrame.

This recipe examines two different syntaxes to select a single column of data, a Series. One syntax uses the index operator and the other uses attribute access (or dot notation).

How to do it…

1. Pass a column name as a string to the indexing operator to select a Series of data:

   >>> movies = pd.read_csv("data/movie.csv")
   >>> movies["director_name"]
   0           James Cameron
   1          Gore Verbinski
   2              Sam Mendes
   3       Christopher Nolan
   4             Doug Walker
                 ...        
   4911          Scott Smith
   4912                  NaN
   4913     Benjamin Roberds
   4914          Daniel...