To drop rows or columns with missing values in a DataFrame and using pandas, the simplest way is to use the pandas dropna() function.
df = df.dropna() #drops rows with missing values
df["Column 1"] = df["Column 1"].dropna() #drops rows with missing values in column "Column 1"
df = df.dropna(axis=1) #drop columns with missing values
When working with data, missing values can make life as an analyst difficult. Depending on the task at hand, you may want to replace missing values with another value, or drop rows, or columns, which contain missing values.
If you want to drop rows or columns with missing values, we can use the pandas dropna() function.
Let’s say I have the following DataFrame of summarized data:
animal_type gender type variable level count sum mean std min 25% 50% 75% max
0 cat female numeric age N/A 5.0 18.0 3.60 1.516575 2.0 3.00 3.0 4.00 6.0
1 cat male numeric age N/A 2.0 3.0 1.50 0.707107 1.0 1.25 1.5 1.75 2.0
2 dog female numeric age N/A 2.0 8.0 4.00 0.000000 4.0 4.00 4.0 4.00 4.0
3 dog male numeric age N/A 4.0 15.0 3.75 1.892969 1.0 3.25 4.5 5.00 5.0
4 cat female numeric weight N/A 5.0 270.0 54.00 32.093613 10.0 40.00 50.0 80.00 90.0
5 cat male numeric weight N/A 2.0 110.0 55.00 63.639610 10.0 32.50 55.0 77.50 100.0
6 dog female numeric weight N/A 2.0 100.0 50.00 42.426407 20.0 35.00 50.0 65.00 80.0
7 dog male numeric weight N/A 4.0 180.0 45.00 23.804761 20.0 27.50 45.0 62.50 70.0
8 cat female categorical state FL 2.0 NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN
9 cat female categorical state NY 1.0 NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN
10 cat female categorical state TX 2.0 NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN
11 cat male categorical state CA 1.0 NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN
12 cat male categorical state TX 1.0 NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN
13 dog female categorical state FL 1.0 NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN
14 dog female categorical state TX 1.0 NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN
15 dog male categorical state CA 1.0 NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN
16 dog male categorical state FL 1.0 NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN
17 dog male categorical state NY 2.0 NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN
18 cat female categorical trained yes 5.0 NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN
19 cat male categorical trained no 2.0 NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN
20 dog female categorical trained no 1.0 NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN
21 dog female categorical trained yes 1.0 NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN
22 dog male categorical trained no 4.0 NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaNIn this dataframe, we have a lot of NaN values.
To drop rows or columns with NaN values, we can use the pandas dropna() function to accomplish this.
Let’s say that we want to drop all of the rows which contain at least 1 NaN value. The following code will remove all rows with NaN values from our DataFrame.
df.dropna()
#output:
animal_type gender type variable level count mean sum std min 25% 50% 75% max
0 cat female numeric age N/A 5.0 3.60 18.0 1.516575 2.0 3.00 3.0 4.00 6.0
1 cat male numeric age N/A 2.0 1.50 3.0 0.707107 1.0 1.25 1.5 1.75 2.0
2 dog female numeric age N/A 2.0 4.00 8.0 0.000000 4.0 4.00 4.0 4.00 4.0
3 dog male numeric age N/A 4.0 3.75 15.0 1.892969 1.0 3.25 4.5 5.00 5.0
4 cat female numeric weight N/A 5.0 54.00 270.0 32.093613 10.0 40.00 50.0 80.00 90.0
5 cat male numeric weight N/A 2.0 55.00 110.0 63.639610 10.0 32.50 55.0 77.50 100.0
6 dog female numeric weight N/A 2.0 50.00 100.0 42.426407 20.0 35.00 50.0 65.00 80.0
7 dog male numeric weight N/A 4.0 45.00 180.0 23.804761 20.0 27.50 45.0 62.50 70.0If we want to drop all of the columns which contain at least 1 NaN value, we can pass ‘axis=1’ to dropna().
df.dropna(axis=1)
animal_type gender type variable level count
0 cat female numeric age N/A 5.0
1 cat male numeric age N/A 2.0
2 dog female numeric age N/A 2.0
3 dog male numeric age N/A 4.0
4 cat female numeric weight N/A 5.0
5 cat male numeric weight N/A 2.0
6 dog female numeric weight N/A 2.0
7 dog male numeric weight N/A 4.0
8 cat female categorical state FL 2.0
9 cat female categorical state NY 1.0
10 cat female categorical state TX 2.0
11 cat male categorical state CA 1.0
12 cat male categorical state TX 1.0
13 dog female categorical state FL 1.0
14 dog female categorical state TX 1.0
15 dog male categorical state CA 1.0
16 dog male categorical state FL 1.0
17 dog male categorical state NY 2.0
18 cat female categorical trained yes 5.0
19 cat male categorical trained no 2.0
20 dog female categorical trained no 1.0
21 dog female categorical trained yes 1.0
22 dog male categorical trained no 4.0Dropping Rows and Columns with Pandas dropna() Function
The pandas dropna() function has different parameters which you can pass which will affect which rows or columns with missing values are dropped.
For example, we can pass different values to the “how” parameter to determine which rows or columns are dropped based on the number of NaN values in that column.
The default dropping behavior for dropna() is to drop if there is at least 1 NaN value in the column, but if we pass ‘how=”all”‘ to dropna(), then all values in that row or column must be NaN.
Let’s say we have a different DataFrame from above:
df = pd.DataFrame({'Name': ['Jim','Sally','Paul','Nancy',np.NaN],
'Height':[np.NaN,np.NaN,np.NaN,np.NaN, np.NaN],
'Weight': [100,120,340,230,np.NaN]})
# Output:
Name Height Weight
0 Jim NaN 100.0
1 Sally NaN 120.0
2 Paul NaN 340.0
3 Nancy NaN 230.0
4 NaN NaN NaNLet’s see how the ‘how’ parameter can affect what is dropped when working with this DataFrame.
By default, if we call dropna() without passing any other parameters, we will drop all rows with at least 1 NaN value. In this case, the return DataFrame will be empty.
If we call dropna() with the ‘how=”all”‘ parameter, we will only drop rows with all NaN values – i.e. the index 4 row.
print(df.dropna())
print(df.dropna(how='all'))
# Output:
Empty DataFrame
Columns: [Name, Height, Weight]
Index: []
Name Height Weight
0 Jim NaN 100.0
1 Sally NaN 120.0
2 Paul NaN 340.0
3 Nancy NaN 230.0If we call dropna() to remove columns with NaN and see how the parameter ‘how’ works in this case, we can pass ‘axis=1’ as well.
print(df.dropna(axis=1))
print(df.dropna(axis=1,how='all'))
# Output:
Empty DataFrame
Columns: []
Index: [0, 1, 2, 3, 4]
Name Weight
0 Jim 100.0
1 Sally 120.0
2 Paul 340.0
3 Nancy 230.0
4 NaN NaNYou can also pass a value to the “thresh” parameter which sets the number of missing values which are required to drop the row or column.
If we pass ‘thresh=2’ to dropna() in our example, only the last row is dropped.
print(df.dropna(thresh=2))
# Output:
Name Height Weight
0 Jim NaN 100.0
1 Sally NaN 120.0
2 Paul NaN 340.0
3 Nancy NaN 230.0Dropping Rows and Columns Based on Subset with dropna() in pandas
The last feature to talk about here with the dropna() function is the ‘subset’ parameter.
We can drop rows and columns based on the missing values of just a single or multiple rows and columns if we want.
Let’s say we have the same DataFrame from above.
We can pass ‘subset=[“Name”]’ to only drop the rows which have a missing value in the “Name” column.
print(df.dropna(subset=["Name"]))
# Output:
Name Height Weight
0 Jim NaN 100.0
1 Sally NaN 120.0
2 Paul NaN 340.0
3 Nancy NaN 230.0As you can see, only the last row is dropped in this case.
Hopefully this article has helped you learn how to drop rows and columns with NaN values using the pandas dropna() function in Python.
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