Question :
I’m using groupby on a pandas dataframe to drop all rows that don’t have the minimum of a specific column. Something like this:
df1 = df.groupby("item", as_index=False)["diff"].min()
However, if I have more than those two columns, the other columns (e.g. otherstuff in my example) get dropped. Can I keep those columns using groupby, or am I going to have to find a different way to drop the rows?
My data looks like:
item diff otherstuff
0 1 2 1
1 1 1 2
2 1 3 7
3 2 -1 0
4 2 1 3
5 2 4 9
6 2 -6 2
7 3 0 0
8 3 2 9
and should end up like:
item diff otherstuff
0 1 1 2
1 2 -6 2
2 3 0 0
but what I’m getting is:
item diff
0 1 1
1 2 -6
2 3 0
I’ve been looking through the documentation and can’t find anything. I tried:
df1 = df.groupby(["item", "otherstuff"], as_index=false)["diff"].min()
df1 = df.groupby("item", as_index=false)["diff"].min()["otherstuff"]
df1 = df.groupby("item", as_index=false)["otherstuff", "diff"].min()
But none of those work (I realized with the last one that the syntax is meant for aggregating after a group is created).
Answer #1:
Method #1: use idxmin() to get the indices of the elements of minimum diff, and then select those:
>>> df.loc[df.groupby("item")["diff"].idxmin()]
item diff otherstuff
1 1 1 2
6 2 -6 2
7 3 0 0
[3 rows x 3 columns]
Method #2: sort by diff, and then take the first element in each item group:
>>> df.sort_values("diff").groupby("item", as_index=False).first()
item diff otherstuff
0 1 1 2
1 2 -6 2
2 3 0 0
[3 rows x 3 columns]
Note that the resulting indices are different even though the row content is the same.
Answer #2:
You can use DataFrame.sort_values with DataFrame.drop_duplicates:
df = df.sort_values(by='diff').drop_duplicates(subset='item')
print (df)
item diff otherstuff
6 2 -6 2
7 3 0 0
1 1 1 2
If possible multiple minimal values per groups and want all min rows use boolean indexing with transform for minimal values per groups:
print (df)
item diff otherstuff
0 1 2 1
1 1 1 2 <-multiple min
2 1 1 7 <-multiple min
3 2 -1 0
4 2 1 3
5 2 4 9
6 2 -6 2
7 3 0 0
8 3 2 9
print (df.groupby("item")["diff"].transform('min'))
0 1
1 1
2 1
3 -6
4 -6
5 -6
6 -6
7 0
8 0
Name: diff, dtype: int64
df = df[df.groupby("item")["diff"].transform('min') == df['diff']]
print (df)
item diff otherstuff
1 1 1 2
2 1 1 7
6 2 -6 2
7 3 0 0
Answer #3:
The above answer worked great if there is / you want one min. In my case there could be multiple mins and I wanted all rows equal to min which .idxmin() doesn’t give you. This worked
def filter_group(dfg, col):
return dfg[dfg[col] == dfg[col].min()]
df = pd.DataFrame({'g': ['a'] * 6 + ['b'] * 6, 'v1': (list(range(3)) + list(range(3))) * 2, 'v2': range(12)})
df.groupby('g',group_keys=False).apply(lambda x: filter_group(x,'v1'))
As an aside, .filter() is also relevant to this question but didn’t work for me.
Answer #4:
If you know that all of your “items” have more than one record you can sort, then use duplicated:
df.sort_values(by='diff').duplicated(subset='item', keep='first')
