Summary
In this chapter, you learned about the pandas methods for data indexing and selection by using the primary pandas data structure – the DataFrame. You compared the DataFrame.loc() and DataFrame.iloc() methods to access items in DataFrames by labels and integer locations, respectively. You also looked at some pandas shortcut methods, including bracket notation, dot notation, and extended indexing. Along the way, you saw how the pandas index is used behind the scenes to align data, and how that can be changed by changing or resetting the index. In addition, we showed you that in many cases, you can assign new values to a subset of data by using it on the left-hand side of an assignment statement (using the equals operator). This creates a very compact and easy-to-read coding style. We saw that an important pandas capability that involved using labels for the row or column index produced more robust code – instead of "hardcoding" the column numbers, they...
