Converting strings to floats in a DataFrame

Question

How to covert a DataFrame column containing strings and NaN values to floats. And there is another column whose values are strings and floats; how to convert th

Answer 1

Here is an example

                            GHI             Temp  Power Day_Type
2016-03-15 06:00:00 -7.99999952505459e-7    18.3    0   NaN
2016-03-15 06:01:00 -7.99999952505459e-7    18.2    0   NaN
2016-03-15 06:02:00 -7.99999952505459e-7    18.3    0   NaN
2016-03-15 06:03:00 -7.99999952505459e-7    18.3    0   NaN
2016-03-15 06:04:00 -7.99999952505459e-7    18.3    0   NaN

but if this is all string values...as was in my case... Convert the desired columns to floats:

df_inv_29['GHI'] = df_inv_29.GHI.astype(float)
df_inv_29['Temp'] = df_inv_29.Temp.astype(float)
df_inv_29['Power'] = df_inv_29.Power.astype(float)

Your dataframe will now have float values :-)