Often you may be interested in dropping rows that contain NaN values in a pandas DataFrame. Fortunately this is easy to do using the pandas dropna() function.
This tutorial shows several examples of how to use this function on the following pandas DataFrame:
import numpy as np import scipy.stats as stats #create DataFrame with some NaN values df = pd.DataFrame({'rating': [np.nan, 85, np.nan, 88, 94, 90, 76, 75, 87, 86], 'points': [np.nan, 25, 14, 16, 27, 20, 12, 15, 14, 19], 'assists': [5, 7, 7, np.nan, 5, 7, 6, 9, 9, 5], 'rebounds': [11, 8, 10, 6, 6, 9, 6, 10, 10, 7]}) #view DataFrame df rating points assists rebounds 0 NaN NaN 5.0 11 1 85.0 25.0 7.0 8 2 NaN 14.0 7.0 10 3 88.0 16.0 NaN 6 4 94.0 27.0 5.0 6 5 90.0 20.0 7.0 9 6 76.0 12.0 6.0 6 7 75.0 15.0 9.0 10 8 87.0 14.0 9.0 10 9 86.0 19.0 5.0 7
Example 1: Drop Rows with Any NaN Values
We can use the following syntax to drop all rows that have any NaN values:
df.dropna()
rating points assists rebounds
1 85.0 25.0 7.0 8
4 94.0 27.0 5.0 6
5 90.0 20.0 7.0 9
6 76.0 12.0 6.0 6
7 75.0 15.0 9.0 10
8 87.0 14.0 9.0 10
9 86.0 19.0 5.0 7
Example 2: Drop Rows with All NaN Values
We can use the following syntax to drop all rows that have all NaN values in each column:
df.dropna(how='all') rating points assists rebounds 0 NaN NaN 5.0 11 1 85.0 25.0 7.0 8 2 NaN 14.0 7.0 10 3 88.0 16.0 NaN 6 4 94.0 27.0 5.0 6 5 90.0 20.0 7.0 9 6 76.0 12.0 6.0 6 7 75.0 15.0 9.0 10 8 87.0 14.0 9.0 10 9 86.0 19.0 5.0 7
There were no rows with all NaN values in this particular DataFrame, so none of the rows were dropped.
Example 3: Drop Rows Below a Certain Threshold
We can use the following syntax to drop all rows that don’t have a certain at least a certain number of non-NaN values:
df.dropna(thresh=3) rating points assists rebounds 1 85.0 25.0 7.0 8 2 NaN 14.0 7.0 10 3 88.0 16.0 NaN 6 4 94.0 27.0 5.0 6 5 90.0 20.0 7.0 9 6 76.0 12.0 6.0 6 7 75.0 15.0 9.0 10 8 87.0 14.0 9.0 10 9 86.0 19.0 5.0 7
The very first row in the original DataFrame did not have at least 3 non-NaN values, so it was the only row that got dropped.
Example 4: Drop Row with Nan Values in a Specific Column
We can use the following syntax to drop all rows that have a NaN value in a specific column:
df.dropna(subset=['assists']) rating points assists rebounds 0 NaN NaN 5.0 11 1 85.0 25.0 7.0 8 2 NaN 14.0 7.0 10 4 94.0 27.0 5.0 6 5 90.0 20.0 7.0 9 6 76.0 12.0 6.0 6 7 75.0 15.0 9.0 10 8 87.0 14.0 9.0 10 9 86.0 19.0 5.0 7
Example 5: Reset Index After Dropping Rows with NaNs
We can use the following syntax to reset the index of the DataFrame after dropping the rows with the NaN values:
#drop all rows that have any NaN values df = df.dropna() #reset index of DataFrame df = df.reset_index(drop=True) #view DataFrame df rating points assists rebounds 0 85.0 25.0 7.0 8 1 94.0 27.0 5.0 6 2 90.0 20.0 7.0 9 3 76.0 12.0 6.0 6 4 75.0 15.0 9.0 10 5 87.0 14.0 9.0 10 6 86.0 19.0 5.0 77
You can find the complete documentation for the dropna() function here.
