What is the most efficient way to loop through dat

Question

I want to perform my own complex operations on financial data in dataframes in a sequential manner.

For example I am using the following MSFT CSV file taken from Yahoo Finance:

Date,Open,High,Low,Close,Volume,Adj Close
2011-10-19,27.37,27.47,27.01,27.13,42880000,27.13
2011-10-18,26.94,27.40,26.80,27.31,52487900,27.31
2011-10-17,27.11,27.42,26.85,26.98,39433400,26.98
2011-10-14,27.31,27.50,27.02,27.27,50947700,27.27

....

I then do the following:

#!/usr/bin/env python
from pandas import *

df = read_csv('table.csv')

for i, row in enumerate(df.values):
    date = df.index[i]
    open, high, low, close, adjclose = row
    #now perform analysis on open/close based on date, etc..

Is that the most efficient way? Given the focus on speed in pandas, I would assume there must be some special function to iterate through the values in a manner that one also retrieves the index (possibly through a generator to be memory efficient)? df.iteritems unfortunately only iterates column by column.

Answer 1

Pandas is based on NumPy arrays. The key to speed with NumPy arrays is to perform your operations on the whole array at once, never row-by-row or item-by-item.

For example, if close is a 1-d array, and you want the day-over-day percent change,

pct_change = close[1:]/close[:-1]

This computes the entire array of percent changes as one statement, instead of

pct_change = []
for row in close:
    pct_change.append(...)

So try to avoid the Python loop for i, row in enumerate(...) entirely, and think about how to perform your calculations with operations on the entire array (or dataframe) as a whole, rather than row-by-row.

Answer 2

Another suggestion would be to combine groupby with vectorized calculations if subsets of the rows shared characteristics which allowed you to do so.

Answer 3

Like what has been mentioned before, pandas object is most efficient when process the whole array at once. However for those who really need to loop through a pandas DataFrame to perform something, like me, I found at least three ways to do it. I have done a short test to see which one of the three is the least time consuming.

t = pd.DataFrame({'a': range(0, 10000), 'b': range(10000, 20000)})
B = []
C = []
A = time.time()
for i,r in t.iterrows():
    C.append((r['a'], r['b']))
B.append(time.time()-A)

C = []
A = time.time()
for ir in t.itertuples():
    C.append((ir[1], ir[2]))    
B.append(time.time()-A)

C = []
A = time.time()
for r in zip(t['a'], t['b']):
    C.append((r[0], r[1]))
B.append(time.time()-A)

print B

Result:

[0.5639059543609619, 0.017839908599853516, 0.005645036697387695]

This is probably not the best way to measure the time consumption but it's quick for me.

Here are some pros and cons IMHO:

• .iterrows(): return index and row items in separate variables, but significantly slower
• .itertuples(): faster than .iterrows(), but return index together with row items, ir[0] is the index
• zip: quickest, but no access to index of the row

Answer 4

For sure, the fastest way to iterate over a dataframe is to access the underlying numpy ndarray either via df.values (as you do) or by accessing each column separately df.column_name.values. Since you want to have access to the index too, you can use df.index.values for that.

index = df.index.values
column_of_interest1 = df.column_name1.values
...
column_of_interestk = df.column_namek.values

for i in range(df.shape[0]):
   index_value = index[i]
   ...
   column_value_k = column_of_interest_k[i]

Not pythonic? Sure. But fast.

If you want to squeeze more juice out of the loop you will want to look into cython. Cython will let you gain huge speedups (think 10x-100x). For maximum performance check memory views for cython.

Answer 5

Just as a small addition, you can also do an apply if you have a complex function that you apply to a single column:

http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/dev/generated/pandas.DataFrame.apply.html

df[b] = df[a].apply(lambda col: do stuff with col here)

Answer 6

You have three options:

By index (simplest):

>>> for index in df.index:
...     print ("df[" + str(index) + "]['B']=" + str(df['B'][index]))

With iterrows (most used):

>>> for index, row in df.iterrows():
...     print ("df[" + str(index) + "]['B']=" + str(row['B']))

With itertuples (fastest):

>>> for row in df.itertuples():
...     print ("df[" + str(row.Index) + "]['B']=" + str(row.B))

Three options display something like:

df[0]['B']=125
df[1]['B']=415
df[2]['B']=23
df[3]['B']=456
df[4]['B']=189
df[5]['B']=456
df[6]['B']=12

Source: neural-networks.io