Pandas column of lists, create a row for each list element

Question

I have a dataframe where some cells contain lists of multiple values. Rather than storing multiple values in a cell, I\'d like to expand the dataframe so that each item in t

Answer 1

lst_col = 'samples'

r = pd.DataFrame({
      col:np.repeat(df[col].values, df[lst_col].str.len())
      for col in df.columns.drop(lst_col)}
    ).assign(**{lst_col:np.concatenate(df[lst_col].values)})[df.columns]

Result:

In [103]: r
Out[103]:
    samples  subject  trial_num
0      0.10        1          1
1     -0.20        1          1
2      0.05        1          1
3      0.25        1          2
4      1.32        1          2
5     -0.17        1          2
6      0.64        1          3
7     -0.22        1          3
8     -0.71        1          3
9     -0.03        2          1
10    -0.65        2          1
11     0.76        2          1
12     1.77        2          2
13     0.89        2          2
14     0.65        2          2
15    -0.98        2          3
16     0.65        2          3
17    -0.30        2          3

PS here you may find a bit more generic solution

---

UPDATE: some explanations: IMO the easiest way to understand this code is to try to execute it step-by-step:

in the following line we are repeating values in one column N times where N - is the length of the corresponding list:

In [10]: np.repeat(df['trial_num'].values, df[lst_col].str.len())
Out[10]: array([1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3], dtype=int64)

this can be generalized for all columns, containing scalar values:

In [11]: pd.DataFrame({
    ...:           col:np.repeat(df[col].values, df[lst_col].str.len())
    ...:           for col in df.columns.drop(lst_col)}
    ...:         )
Out[11]:
    trial_num  subject
0           1        1
1           1        1
2           1        1
3           2        1
4           2        1
5           2        1
6           3        1
..        ...      ...
11          1        2
12          2        2
13          2        2
14          2        2
15          3        2
16          3        2
17          3        2

[18 rows x 2 columns]

using np.concatenate() we can flatten all values in the list column (samples) and get a 1D vector:

In [12]: np.concatenate(df[lst_col].values)
Out[12]: array([-1.04, -0.58, -1.32,  0.82, -0.59, -0.34,  0.25,  2.09,  0.12,  0.83, -0.88,  0.68,  0.55, -0.56,  0.65, -0.04,  0.36, -0.31])

putting all this together:

In [13]: pd.DataFrame({
    ...:           col:np.repeat(df[col].values, df[lst_col].str.len())
    ...:           for col in df.columns.drop(lst_col)}
    ...:         ).assign(**{lst_col:np.concatenate(df[lst_col].values)})
Out[13]:
    trial_num  subject  samples
0           1        1    -1.04
1           1        1    -0.58
2           1        1    -1.32
3           2        1     0.82
4           2        1    -0.59
5           2        1    -0.34
6           3        1     0.25
..        ...      ...      ...
11          1        2     0.68
12          2        2     0.55
13          2        2    -0.56
14          2        2     0.65
15          3        2    -0.04
16          3        2     0.36
17          3        2    -0.31

[18 rows x 3 columns]

using pd.DataFrame()[df.columns] will guarantee that we are selecting columns in the original order...