Tuesday Tip #5: Visualize your pandas code 🐼


Hi Reader!

Today’s tip is most useful if you already have some experience with pandas, which is the main data analysis library in Python.

If you’re brand new to pandas, I recommend starting here:

πŸ”— Easier data analysis with pandas (my free video series)

Let’s move on to today's tip!


πŸ‘‰ Tip #5: Visualize your code with Pandas Tutor

In order to progress from pandas beginner to intermediate (and beyond), it’s important to build a mental model of what happens when you run your pandas code.

If you’re struggling to build that mental model, Pandas Tutor might be the perfect tool for you!

For example, if you input code like this:

dogs.groupby('size').mean()

Pandas Tutor outputs a diagram like this:

​Interact with the live diagram​

Or if you input more complex code like this:

titanic.groupby(['Embarked', 'Sex'])['Pclass'].mean().unstack()

Pandas Tutor outputs a multi-step diagram like this:

​Interact with the live diagram​

If you want to explore further, scroll to the bottom of Pandas Tutor and click on one of the many examples.

Once you’ve understood an example, I’d encourage you to change the code and/or the data, and see if the diagram changes in the way that you expect.

You can even paste in your own data! Just open up any CSV file, copy the top few rows (including the header), and paste them in place of the multi-line "csv" string:

Related Projects

​Tidy Data Tutor is very similar, except it’s for R code and the Tidyverse.

​Python Tutor was created by the same author, and it allows you to visualize Python, JavaScript, C, C++, and Java code.

​nbtutor is a Jupyter Notebook extension for visualizing Python code within your notebook.

How helpful was today’s tip?

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See you next Tuesday!

- Kevin

P.S. Whoa, you trained a neural net!

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