Getting the mean, median, mode, and range for a single column

Once again harkening back to algebra, we want to view the mean, median, mode, and range for a single column of our data. If you need a refresher in the definitions of these terms, here you go:

  • Mean: the average
  • Median: the middle value
  • Mode: the value that occurs most often
  • Range: the difference between the minimum and maximum values

How to do it…

  1. To get the mean, median, mode, and range for a single column in a Pandas DataFrame, begin by importing the required libraries:
    import pandas as pd
  2. Next, import the dataset from the CSV file:
    accidents_data_file = '/Users/robertdempsey/Dropbox/private/Python Business Intelligence Cookbook/Data/Stats19-Data1979-2004/Accidents7904.csv'
accidents = pd.read_csv(accidents_data_file,
                        sep=',',
                        header=0,
                        index_col=False,
                        parse_dates=['Date'],
                        dayfirst=True,
                        tupleize_cols=False,
                        error_bad_lines=True,
                        warn_bad_lines=True,
                        skip_blank_lines=True
                        )
  3. Finally, print out the mean, median, mode, and range for the specified column of the DataFrame as follows:
    print("Mean: {}".format(accidents['Number_of_Vehicles'].mean()))
print("Median: {}".format(accidents['Number_of_Vehicles'].median()))
print("Mode: {}".format(accidents['Number_of_Vehicles'].mode()))
print("Range: {}".format(
        range(accidents['Number_of_Vehicles'].min(),
              accidents['Number_of_Vehicles'].max()
             )
    ))

How it works…

We begin by importing the Python libraries that we need and by creating a DataFrame from the source data. We then use Pandas' built-in mean(), median(), and mode() functions to return those values:

print("Mean: {}".format(accidents['Number_of_Vehicles'].mean()))
print("Median: {}".format(accidents['Number_of_Vehicles'].median()))
print("Mode: {}".format(accidents['Number_of_Vehicles'].mode()))
print("Range: {}".format(
        range(accidents['Number_of_Vehicles'].min(),
              accidents['Number_of_Vehicles'].max()
             )
    ))

For the range, we use the range() function from Python, providing it with the start and stop values:

How it works…
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