Convert float64 column to int64 in Pandas

Question

I tried to convert a column from data type float64 to int64 using:

df[\'column name\'].astype(int64)

but got an e

Answer 1

You can need to pass in the string 'int64':

>>> import pandas as pd
>>> df = pd.DataFrame({'a': [1.0, 2.0]})  # some test dataframe

>>> df['a'].astype('int64')
0    1
1    2
Name: a, dtype: int64

There are some alternative ways to specify 64-bit integers:

>>> df['a'].astype('i8')      # integer with 8 bytes (64 bit)
0    1
1    2
Name: a, dtype: int64

>>> import numpy as np
>>> df['a'].astype(np.int64)  # native numpy 64 bit integer
0    1
1    2
Name: a, dtype: int64

Or use np.int64 directly on your column (but it returns a numpy.array):

>>> np.int64(df['a'])
array([1, 2], dtype=int64)