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# pandas: powerful Python data analysis toolkit
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| --- | --- |
| Testing | [](https://github.com/pandas-dev/pandas/actions/workflows/unit-tests.yml) [](https://codecov.io/gh/pandas-dev/pandas) |
| Package | [](https://pypi.org/project/pandas/) [](https://pypi.org/project/pandas/) [](https://anaconda.org/conda-forge/pandas) [](https://anaconda.org/conda-forge/pandas) |
| Meta | [](https://numfocus.org) [](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3509134) [](https://github.com/pandas-dev/pandas/blob/main/LICENSE) [](https://pandas.pydata.org/docs/dev/development/community.html?highlight=slack#community-slack) |
## What is it?
**pandas** is a Python package that provides fast, flexible, and expressive data
structures designed to make working with "relational" or "labeled" data both
easy and intuitive. It aims to be the fundamental high-level building block for
doing practical, **real world** data analysis in Python. Additionally, it has
the broader goal of becoming **the most powerful and flexible open source data
analysis / manipulation tool available in any language**. It is already well on
its way towards this goal.
## Table of Contents
- [Main Features](#main-features)
- [Where to get it](#where-to-get-it)
- [Dependencies](#dependencies)
- [Installation from sources](#installation-from-sources)
- [License](#license)
- [Documentation](#documentation)
- [Background](#background)
- [Getting Help](#getting-help)
- [Discussion and Development](#discussion-and-development)
- [Contributing to pandas](#contributing-to-pandas)
## Main Features
Here are just a few of the things that pandas does well:
- Easy handling of [**missing data**][missing-data] (represented as
`NaN`, `NA`, or `NaT`) in floating point as well as non-floating point data
- Size mutability: columns can be [**inserted and
deleted**][insertion-deletion] from DataFrame and higher dimensional
objects
- Automatic and explicit [**data alignment**][alignment]: objects can
be explicitly aligned to a set of labels, or the user can simply
ignore the labels and let `Series`, `DataFrame`, etc. automatically
align the data for you in computations
- Powerful, flexible [**group by**][groupby] functionality to perform
split-apply-combine operations on data sets, for both aggregating
and transforming data
- Make it [**easy to convert**][conversion] ragged,
differently-indexed data in other Python and NumPy data structures
into DataFrame objects
- Intelligent label-based [**slicing**][slicing], [**fancy
indexing**][fancy-indexing], and [**subsetting**][subsetting] of
large data sets
- Intuitive [**merging**][merging] and [**joining**][joining] data
sets
- Flexible [**reshaping**][reshape] and [**pivoting**][pivot-table] of
data sets
- [**Hierarchical**][mi] labeling of axes (possible to have multiple
labels per tick)
- Robust IO tools for loading data from [**flat files**][flat-files]
(CSV and delimited), [**Excel files**][excel], [**databases**][db],
and saving/loading data from the ultrafast [**HDF5 format**][hdfstore]
- [**Time series**][timeseries]-specific functionality: date range
generation and frequency conversion, moving window statistics,
date shifting and lagging
[missing-data]: https://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/user_guide/missing_data.html
[insertion-deletion]: https://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/user_guide/dsintro.html#column-selection-addition-deletion
[alignment]: https://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/user_guide/dsintro.html?highlight=alignment#intro-to-data-structures
[groupby]: https://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/user_guide/groupby.html#group-by-split-apply-combine
[conversion]: https://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/user_guide/dsintro.html#dataframe
[slicing]: https://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/user_guide/indexing.html#slicing-ranges
[fancy-indexing]: https://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/user_guide/advanced.html#advanced
[subsetting]: https://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/user_guide/indexing.html#boolean-indexing
[merging]: https://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/user_guide/merging.html#database-style-dataframe-or-named-series-joining-merging
[joining]: https://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/user_guide/merging.html#joining-on-index
[reshape]: https://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/user_guide/reshaping.html
[pivot-table]: https://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/user_guide/reshaping.html
[mi]: https://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/user_guide/indexing.html#hierarchical-indexing-multiindex
[flat-files]: https://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/user_guide/io.html#csv-text-files
[excel]: https://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/user_guide/io.html#excel-files
[db]: https://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/user_guide/io.html#sql-queries
[hdfstore]: https://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/user_guide/io.html#hdf5-pytables
[timeseries]: https://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/user_guide/timeseries.html#time-series-date-functionality
## Where to get it
The source code is currently hosted on GitHub at:
https://github.com/pandas-dev/pandas
Binary installers for the latest released version are available at the [Python
Package Index (PyPI)](https://pypi.org/project/pandas) and on [Conda](https://docs.conda.io/en/latest/).
```sh
# conda
conda install -c conda-forge pandas
```
```sh
# or PyPI
pip install pandas
```
The list of changes to pandas between each release can be found
[here](https://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/whatsnew/index.html). For full
details, see the commit logs at https://github.com/pandas-dev/pandas.
## Dependencies
- [NumPy - Adds support for large, multi-dimensional arrays, matrices and high-level mathematical functions to operate on these arrays](https://www.numpy.org)
- [python-dateutil - Provides powerful extensions to the standard datetime module](https://dateutil.readthedocs.io/en/stable/index.html)
- [pytz - Brings the Olson tz database into Python which allows accurate and cross platform timezone calculations](https://github.com/stub42/pytz)
See the [full installation instructions](https://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/install.html#dependencies) for minimum supported versions of required, recommended and optional dependencies.
## Installation from sources
To install pandas from source you need [Cython](https://cython.org/) in addition to the normal
dependencies above. Cython can be installed from PyPI:
```sh
pip install cython
```
In the `pandas` directory (same one where you found this file after
cloning the git repo), execute:
```sh
pip install .
```
or for installing in [development mode](https://pip.pypa.io/en/latest/cli/pip_install/#install-editable):
```sh
python -m pip install -ve . --no-build-isolation --config-settings=editable-verbose=true
```
See the full instructions for [installing from source](https://pandas.pydata.org/docs/dev/development/contributing_environment.html).
## License
[BSD 3](LICENSE)
## Documentation
The official documentation is hosted on [PyData.org](https://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/).
## Background
Work on ``pandas`` started at [AQR](https://www.aqr.com/) (a quantitative hedge fund) in 2008 and
has been under active development since then.
## Getting Help
For usage questions, the best place to go to is [StackOverflow](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/pandas).
Further, general questions and discussions can also take place on the [pydata mailing list](https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/pydata).
## Discussion and Development
Most development discussions take place on GitHub in this repo, via the [GitHub issue tracker](https://github.com/pandas-dev/pandas/issues).
Further, the [pandas-dev mailing list](https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/pandas-dev) can also be used for specialized discussions or design issues, and a [Slack channel](https://pandas.pydata.org/docs/dev/development/community.html?highlight=slack#community-slack) is available for quick development related questions.
There are also frequent [community meetings](https://pandas.pydata.org/docs/dev/development/community.html#community-meeting) for project maintainers open to the community as well as monthly [new contributor meetings](https://pandas.pydata.org/docs/dev/development/community.html#new-contributor-meeting) to help support new contributors.
Additional information on the communication channels can be found on the [contributor community](https://pandas.pydata.org/docs/development/community.html) page.
## Contributing to pandas
[](https://www.codetriage.com/pandas-dev/pandas)
All contributions, bug reports, bug fixes, documentation improvements, enhancements, and ideas are welcome.
A detailed overview on how to contribute can be found in the **[contributing guide](https://pandas.pydata.org/docs/dev/development/contributing.html)**.
If you are simply looking to start working with the pandas codebase, navigate to the [GitHub "issues" tab](https://github.com/pandas-dev/pandas/issues) and start looking through interesting issues. There are a number of issues listed under [Docs](https://github.com/pandas-dev/pandas/issues?labels=Docs&sort=updated&state=open) and [good first issue](https://github.com/pandas-dev/pandas/issues?labels=good+first+issue&sort=updated&state=open) where you could start out.
You can also triage issues which may include reproducing bug reports, or asking for vital information such as version numbers or reproduction instructions. If you would like to start triaging issues, one easy way to get started is to [subscribe to pandas on CodeTriage](https://www.codetriage.com/pandas-dev/pandas).
Or maybe through using pandas you have an idea of your own or are looking for something in the documentation and thinking ‘this can be improved’...you can do something about it!
Feel free to ask questions on the [mailing list](https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/pydata) or on [Slack](https://pandas.pydata.org/docs/dev/development/community.html?highlight=slack#community-slack).
As contributors and maintainers to this project, you are expected to abide by pandas' code of conduct. More information can be found at: [Contributor Code of Conduct](https://github.com/pandas-dev/.github/blob/master/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md)
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