Effective Pandas Patterns For Data Engineering
Data Engineering Podcast
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Scaling Out in Pandas
Tobias: If you're playing with a data set in pandas, you probably want three to ten x the amount of memory for some overhead. Pandas often has two or three ways to do something and sometimes it's good, but sometimes that might be dependent on how big your data is. He says he hasn't had much experience with scale out systems such as dask nor spark. tobias: One thing i have seen is that python has this thing called a xeno python. And xenopython said there should be one, and preferably only one, way to do things.
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Summary
Pandas is a powerful tool for cleaning, transforming, manipulating, or enriching data, among many other potential uses. As a result it has become a standard tool for data engineers for a wide range of applications. Matt Harrison is a Python expert with a long history of working with data who now spends his time on consulting and training. He recently wrote a book on effective patterns for Pandas code, and in this episode he shares advice on how to write efficient data processing routines that will scale with your data volumes, while being understandable and maintainable.
Announcements
- Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data management
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- Your host is Tobias Macey and today I’m interviewing Matt Harrison about useful tips for using Pandas for data engineering projects
Interview
- Introduction
- How did you get involved in the area of data management?
- What are the main tasks that you have seen Pandas used for in a data engineering context?
- What are some of the common mistakes that can lead to poor performance when scaling to large data sets?
- What are some of the utility features that you have found most helpful for data processing?
- One of the interesting add-ons to Pandas is its integration with Arrow. What are some of the considerations for how and when to use the Arrow capabilities vs. out-of-the-box Pandas?
- Pandas is a tool that spans data processing and data science. What are some of the ways that data engineers should think about writing their code to make it accessible to data scientists for supporting collaboration across data workflows?
- Pandas is often used for transformation logic. What are some of the ways that engineers should approach the design of their code to make it understandable and maintainable?
- How can data engineers support testing their transformations?
- There are a number of projects that aim to scale Pandas logic across cores and clusters. What are some of the considerations for when to use one of these tools, and how to select the proper framework? (e.g. Dask, Modin, Ray, etc.)
- What are some anti-patterns that engineers should guard against when using Pandas for data processing?
- What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected ways that you have seen Pandas used for data processing?
- When is Pandas the wrong choice for data processing?
- What are some of the projects related to Pandas that you are keeping an eye on?
Contact Info
- @__mharrison__ on Twitter
- metasnake
- Effective Pandas Bundle (affiliate link with 20% discount code applied)
Parting Question
- From your perspective, what is the biggest gap in the tooling or technology for data management today?
Closing Announcements
- Thank you for listening! Don’t forget to check out our other show, Podcast.__init__ to learn about the Python language, its community, and the innovative ways it is being used.
- Visit the site to subscribe to the show, sign up for the mailing list, and read the show notes.
- If you’ve learned something or tried out a project from the show then tell us about it! Email hosts@dataengineeringpodcast.com) with your story.
- To help other people find the show please leave a review on iTunes and tell your friends and co-workers
Links
- Metasnake
- Snowflake Schema
- OLAP
- Panel Data
- NumPy
- Dask
- Parquet
- Arrow
- Feather
- Zen of Python
- Joel Grus’ I Don’t Like Notebooks presentation
- Pandas Method Chaining
- Effective Pandas Book (affiliate link with 20% discount code applied)
- pytest
- Great Expectations
- Hypothesis
- Papermill
- Jupytext
- Koalas
- Modin
- Spark
- Ray
- Spark Pandas API
- Vaex
- Rapids
- Terality
- H2O
- H2O DataTable
- Fugue
- Ibis
- Multi-process Pandas
- PandaPy
- Polars
- Google Colab
The intro and outro music is from The Hug by The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA
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