If you are just starting out with Python, you have probably heard about Pandas. It is one of the most powerful and popular libraries in Python, designed specifically for data manipulation and analysis. With Pandas, you can load, clean, explore, and analyze data with just a few lines of code.
In this quick 30-minute guide, I will walk you through the essentials of Pandas, covering the basics that will help you get up and running fast. Whether you are a student, data enthusiast, or budding data scientist, this guide will give you the foundation you need to start working with data in Python. We will focus on hands-on examples so you can follow along and practice as you go.
By the end of this blog, you will know how to:
No prior experience with Pandas is required. Open up a coding notebook on Google, and let's dive into learning Pandas in just 30 minutes!
Imagine we are running a coffee shop and want to gain insights into our sales performance. We have data on daily coffee sales as well as product information. Our goal is to create a daily sales report that breaks down sales across different dimensions, helping us better understand our café's performance.
When learning a new programming language, it is essential to separate the business concepts from the coding concepts. This approach allows you to focus on one aspect at a time. Therefore, we start by quickly walking through how to generate the sales report in Excel, and then coding the same tasks using Pandas in Python.
The insights we want to know is
a/ What is the total cafe sales this week ?
b/ What is the most popular product in the cafe ?
c/ Which day of week generated the most sales ?
d/ Can we breakdown the sales number into different dimensions ?
e/ Can we visualize the sales number into graphs ?