Page 1: Basic Installation & Data Loading

1. Basic Installation & Data Loading

pandas is a fast, powerful, flexible, and easy-to-use open-source data analysis and manipulation tool, built on top of the Python programming language.

1.1. Installation

You can easily install pandas using pip, Python's package installer:

pip install pandas numpy

It's also recommended to install NumPy as pandas heavily relies on it.

1.2. Loading Data

pandas provides various functions to load data from different sources. The most common data structures are DataFrame (a 2-dimensional labeled data structure) and Series (a 1-dimensional labeled array).

Loading CSV Files

import pandas as pd

df = pd.read_csv('data.csv')
print(df.head())

Loading Excel Files

df_excel = pd.read_excel('data.xlsx', sheet_name='Sheet1')
print(df_excel.head())

Key Concept: A DataFrame is like a table, and each column is a Series.