Using scientific notation in pandas

Question

I found plenty of answers on how to suppress scientific notation in pandas, but how do I enable it? I found the option pd.set_option('precision', 2) but it does not turn large numbers into scientific notation.

For example, I would like the number 123066.14 to be formatted as 1.23E+5. I am using a pandas.DataFrame, and it would be useful to set the formatting for an entire column when exporting/printing.

Answer 1

OK, I figured this out, you can use set_option and pass a format string to option 'display.float_format':

In [76]:
pd.set_option('display.float_format', '{:.2g}'.format)

In [78]:
pd.Series(data=[0.00000001])

Out[78]:
0   1e-08
dtype: float64

EDIT

to match your desired output:

In [79]:
pd.set_option('display.float_format', '{:.2E}'.format)
pd.Series(data=[0.00000001])

Out[79]:
0   1.00E-08
dtype: float64