Specifying column names and index in Pandas - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Specifying Column Names and Index in pandas DataFrame

📖 Scenario: You work in a small bookstore. You have sales data but it comes without column names and index labels. You want to organize it properly so you can analyze it easily.

🎯 Goal: Create a pandas DataFrame from raw sales data by specifying the column names and setting a custom index for the rows.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a pandas DataFrame from a list of lists with raw sales data.

Specify the column names as 'Book', 'Author', and 'Copies Sold'.

Set the index of the DataFrame to be the book titles.

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Organizing raw data with proper column names and indexes is essential for clear data analysis and reporting in any business.

💼 Career

Data analysts and scientists often receive data without headers or indexes and must clean and structure it before analysis.

1

Create raw sales data list

Create a variable called raw_data that holds this list of lists exactly: [["The Alchemist", "Paulo Coelho", 120], ["1984", "George Orwell", 85], ["To Kill a Mockingbird", "Harper Lee", 95]]

Pandas

# Create the raw_data list with the exact entries
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a variable named raw_data and assign the list of lists exactly as shown.

2

Import pandas and define column names

Import pandas as pd. Create a list called columns with these exact strings: 'Book', 'Author', and 'Copies Sold'.

Pandas

raw_data = [["The Alchemist", "Paulo Coelho", 120], ["1984", "George Orwell", 85], ["To Kill a Mockingbird", "Harper Lee", 95]]
# Import pandas as pd
# Create the columns list with 'Book', 'Author', 'Copies Sold'
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use import pandas as pd and create a list named columns with the exact column names.

3

Create DataFrame with specified columns

Create a pandas DataFrame called df from raw_data using the columns list to specify the column names.

Pandas

import pandas as pd
raw_data = [["The Alchemist", "Paulo Coelho", 120], ["1984", "George Orwell", 85], ["To Kill a Mockingbird", "Harper Lee", 95]]
columns = ['Book', 'Author', 'Copies Sold']
# Create DataFrame df from raw_data with columns=columns
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use pd.DataFrame() with raw_data and columns=columns.

4

Set the DataFrame index to the book titles

Set the index of the DataFrame df to the 'Book' column using df.set_index('Book', inplace=True).

Pandas

import pandas as pd
raw_data = [["The Alchemist", "Paulo Coelho", 120], ["1984", "George Orwell", 85], ["To Kill a Mockingbird", "Harper Lee", 95]]
columns = ['Book', 'Author', 'Copies Sold']
df = pd.DataFrame(raw_data, columns=columns)
# Set the index of df to the 'Book' column inplace
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use df.set_index('Book', inplace=True) to set the index to the book titles.