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

5.3 GROUP BY

In pandas, SQL’s GROUP BY operations are performed using the similarly named groupby() method. groupby() typically refers to a process where we’d like to split a dataset into groups, apply some function (typically aggregation) , and then combine the groups together.

A common SQL operation would be getting the count of records in each group throughout a dataset. For instance, a query getting us the number of tips left by sex:

SELECT sex, count(*)
FROM tips
GROUP BY sex;
/*
Female     87
Male      157
*/

The pandas equivalent would be:

In [2]: tips.groupby('sex').size()
Out[2]: 
sex
Female     87
Male      157
dtype: int64

Notice that in the pandas code we used size() and not count(). This is because count() applies the function to each column, returning the number of not null records within each.

In [3]: tips.groupby('sex').count()
Out[3]: 
        total_bill  tip  smoker  day  time  size
sex                                             
Female          87   87      87   87    87    87
Male           157  157     157  157   157   157

Alternatively, we could have applied the count() method to an individual column:

In [4]: tips.groupby('sex')['total_bill'].count()
Out[4]: 
sex
Female     87
Male      157
Name: total_bill, dtype: int64

Multiple functions can also be applied at once. For instance, say we’d like to see how tip amount differs by day of the week - agg() allows you to pass a dictionary to your grouped DataFrame, indicating which functions to apply to specific columns.

SELECT day, AVG(tip), COUNT(*)
FROM tips
GROUP BY day;
/*
Fri   2.734737   19
Sat   2.993103   87
Sun   3.255132   76
Thur  2.771452   62
*/

In [5]: tips.groupby('day').agg({'tip': np.mean, 'day': np.size})
Out[5]: 
           tip  day
day                
Fri   2.734737   19
Sat   2.993103   87
Sun   3.255132   76
Thur  2.771452   62

Grouping by more than one column is done by passing a list of columns to the groupby() method.

SELECT smoker, day, COUNT(*), AVG(tip)
FROM tips
GROUP BY smoker, day;
/*
smoker day
No     Fri      4  2.812500
       Sat     45  3.102889
       Sun     57  3.167895
       Thur    45  2.673778
Yes    Fri     15  2.714000
       Sat     42  2.875476
       Sun     19  3.516842
       Thur    17  3.030000
*/

In [6]: tips.groupby(['smoker', 'day']).agg({'tip': [np.size, np.mean]})
Out[6]: 
              tip          
             size      mean
smoker day                 
No     Fri    4.0  2.812500
       Sat   45.0  3.102889
       Sun   57.0  3.167895
       Thur  45.0  2.673778
Yes    Fri   15.0  2.714000
       Sat   42.0  2.875476
       Sun   19.0  3.516842
       Thur  17.0  3.030000