How can I check for NaN values?

Question

float(\'nan\') results in Nan (not a number). But how do I check for it? Should be very easy, but I cannot find it.

Answer 1

It seems that checking if it's equal to itself

x!=x

is the fastest.

import pandas as pd 
import numpy as np 
import math 

x = float('nan')

%timeit x!=x                                                                                                                                                                                                                        
44.8 ns ± 0.152 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 10000000 loops each)

%timeit math.isnan(x)                                                                                                                                                                                                               
94.2 ns ± 0.955 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 10000000 loops each)

%timeit pd.isna(x) 
281 ns ± 5.48 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1000000 loops each)

%timeit np.isnan(x)                                                                                                                                                                                                                 
1.38 µs ± 15.7 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1000000 loops each)