vectorize conditional assignment in pandas dataframe
One simple method would be to assign the default value first and then perform 2 loc
calls:
In [66]:df = pd.DataFrame({'x':[0,-3,5,-1,1]})dfOut[66]: x0 01 -32 53 -14 1In [69]:df['y'] = 0df.loc[df['x'] < -2, 'y'] = 1df.loc[df['x'] > 2, 'y'] = -1dfOut[69]: x y0 0 01 -3 12 5 -13 -1 04 1 0
If you wanted to use np.where
then you could do it with a nested np.where
:
In [77]:df['y'] = np.where(df['x'] < -2 , 1, np.where(df['x'] > 2, -1, 0))dfOut[77]: x y0 0 01 -3 12 5 -13 -1 04 1 0
So here we define the first condition as where x is less than -2, return 1, then we have another np.where
which tests the other condition where x is greater than 2 and returns -1, otherwise return 0
timings
In [79]:%timeit df['y'] = np.where(df['x'] < -2 , 1, np.where(df['x'] > 2, -1, 0))1000 loops, best of 3: 1.79 ms per loopIn [81]:%%timeitdf['y'] = 0df.loc[df['x'] < -2, 'y'] = 1df.loc[df['x'] > 2, 'y'] = -1100 loops, best of 3: 3.27 ms per loop
So for this sample dataset the np.where
method is twice as fast
This is a good use case for pd.cut
where you define ranges and based on those ranges
you can assign labels
:
df['y'] = pd.cut(df['x'], [-np.inf, -2, 2, np.inf], labels=[1, 0, -1], right=False)
Output
x y0 0 01 -3 12 5 -13 -1 04 1 0