pandas: to_numeric for multiple columns

Question

I\'m working with the following df:

c.sort_values(\'2005\', ascending=False).head(3)
      GeoName ComponentName     IndustryId IndustryClassification Descri         


        

Answer 1

UPDATE: you don't need to convert your values afterwards, you can do it on-the-fly when reading your CSV:

In [165]: df=pd.read_csv(url, index_col=0, na_values=['(NA)']).fillna(0)

In [166]: df.dtypes
Out[166]:
GeoName                    object
ComponentName              object
IndustryId                  int64
IndustryClassification     object
Description                object
2004                        int64
2005                        int64
2006                        int64
2007                        int64
2008                        int64
2009                        int64
2010                        int64
2011                        int64
2012                        int64
2013                        int64
2014                      float64
dtype: object

If you need to convert multiple columns to numeric dtypes - use the following technique:

Sample source DF:

In [271]: df
Out[271]:
     id    a  b  c  d  e    f
0  id_3  AAA  6  3  5  8    1
1  id_9    3  7  5  7  3  BBB
2  id_7    4  2  3  5  4    2
3  id_0    7  3  5  7  9    4
4  id_0    2  4  6  4  0    2

In [272]: df.dtypes
Out[272]:
id    object
a     object
b      int64
c      int64
d      int64
e      int64
f     object
dtype: object

Converting selected columns to numeric dtypes:

In [273]: cols = df.columns.drop('id')

In [274]: df[cols] = df[cols].apply(pd.to_numeric, errors='coerce')

In [275]: df
Out[275]:
     id    a  b  c  d  e    f
0  id_3  NaN  6  3  5  8  1.0
1  id_9  3.0  7  5  7  3  NaN
2  id_7  4.0  2  3  5  4  2.0
3  id_0  7.0  3  5  7  9  4.0
4  id_0  2.0  4  6  4  0  2.0

In [276]: df.dtypes
Out[276]:
id     object
a     float64
b       int64
c       int64
d       int64
e       int64
f     float64
dtype: object

PS if you want to select all string (object) columns use the following simple trick:

cols = df.columns[df.dtypes.eq('object')]