“Series objects are mutable and cannot be hashed” error

Question

I am trying to get the following script to work. The input file consists of 3 columns: gene association type, gene name, and disease name.

cols = [\'Gene typ         


        

Answer 1

Shortly: gene_name[x] is a mutable object so it cannot be hashed. To use an object as a key in a dictionary, python needs to use its hash value, and that's why you get an error.

Further explanation:

Mutable objects are objects which value can be changed. For example, list is a mutable object, since you can append to it. int is an immutable object, because you can't change it. When you do:

a = 5;
a = 3;

You don't change the value of a, you create a new object and make a point to its value.

Mutable objects cannot be hashed. See this answer.

To solve your problem, you should use immutable objects as keys in your dictionary. For example: tuple, string, int.