In [1]: tips.head()
Out[1]: 
   total_bill   tip     sex smoker  day    time  size
0       16.99  1.01  Female     No  Sun  Dinner     2
1       10.34  1.66    Male     No  Sun  Dinner     3
2       21.01  3.50    Male     No  Sun  Dinner     3
3       23.68  3.31    Male     No  Sun  Dinner     2
4       24.59  3.61  Female     No  Sun  Dinner     4

5.1 SELECT

In SQL, selection is done using a comma-separated list of columns you’d like to select (or a * to select all columns):

SELECT total_bill, tip, smoker, time
FROM tips
LIMIT 5;

With pandas, column selection is done by passing a list of column names to your DataFrame:

In [2]: tips[['total_bill', 'tip', 'smoker', 'time']].head(5)
Out[2]: 
   total_bill   tip smoker    time
0       16.99  1.01     No  Dinner
1       10.34  1.66     No  Dinner
2       21.01  3.50     No  Dinner
3       23.68  3.31     No  Dinner
4       24.59  3.61     No  Dinner

Calling the DataFrame without the list of column names would display all columns (akin to SQL’s *).