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On my own I found a way to drop nan rows from a pandas dataframe. Given a dataframe dat with column x which contains nan values,is there a more elegant way to do drop each row of dat which has a nan value in the x column?

dat = dat[np.logical_not(np.isnan(dat.x))] dat = dat.reset_index(drop=True) 
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  • 2
    you mean pd.dropna()? Commented Apr 2, 2016 at 8:09
  • that looks like it will work Commented Apr 2, 2016 at 8:12

7 Answers 7

143

Use dropna:

dat.dropna() 

You can pass param how to drop if all labels are nan or any of the labels are nan

dat.dropna(how='any') #to drop if any value in the row has a nan dat.dropna(how='all') #to drop if all values in the row are nan 

Hope that answers your question!

Edit 1: In case you want to drop rows containing nan values only from particular column(s), as suggested by J. Doe in his answer below, you can use the following:

dat.dropna(subset=[col_list]) # col_list is a list of column names to consider for nan values. 
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Comments

27

To expand Hitesh's answer if you want to drop rows where 'x' specifically is nan, you can use the subset parameter. His answer will drop rows where other columns have nans as well

dat.dropna(subset=['x']) 

Comments

16

Just in case commands in previous answers doesn't work, Try this: dat.dropna(subset=['x'], inplace = True)

1 Comment

yeah, pandas defaults are inplace=False, need to remember that
2

This answer introduces the thresh parameter which is absolutely useful in some use-cases.
Note: I added this answer because some questions have been marked as duplicates directing to this page which none of the approaches here addresses such use-cases eg; The bellow df format.
Example:
This approach addresses:

  1. Dropping rows/columns with all NaN
  2. Keeping rows/columns with desired number of non-NaN values (having valid data)
# Approaching rows ------------------ # Sample df df = pd.DataFrame({'Names': ['Name1', 'Name2', 'Name3', 'Name4'], 'Sunday': [2, None, 3, 3], 'Tuesday': [0, None, 3, None], 'Wednesday': [None, None, 4, None], 'Friday': [1, None, 7, None]}) print(df) Names Sunday Tuesday Wednesday Friday 0 Name1 2.0 0.0 NaN 1.0 1 Name2 NaN NaN NaN NaN 2 Name3 3.0 3.0 4.0 7.0 3 Name4 3.0 NaN NaN NaN # Keep only the rows with at least 2 non-NA values. df = df.dropna(thresh=2) print(df) Names Sunday Tuesday Wednesday Friday 0 Name1 2.0 0.0 NaN 1.0 2 Name3 3.0 3.0 4.0 7.0 3 Name4 3.0 NaN NaN NaN # Keep only the rows with at least 3 non-NA values. df = df.dropna(thresh=3) print(df) Names Sunday Tuesday Wednesday Friday 0 Name1 2.0 0.0 NaN 1.0 2 Name3 3.0 3.0 4.0 7.0 

# Approaching columns: We need axis here to direct drop to columns ------------------------------------------------------------------ # If axis=0 or not called, drop is applied to only rows like the above examples # original df print(df) Names Sunday Tuesday Wednesday Friday 0 Name1 2.0 0.0 NaN 1.0 1 Name2 NaN NaN NaN NaN 2 Name3 3.0 3.0 4.0 7.0 3 Name4 3.0 NaN NaN NaN # Keep only the columns with at least 2 non-NA values. df =df.dropna(axis=1, thresh=2) print(df) Names Sunday Tuesday Friday 0 Name1 2.0 0.0 1.0 1 Name2 NaN NaN NaN 2 Name3 3.0 3.0 7.0 3 Name4 3.0 NaN NaN # Keep only the columns with at least 3 non-NA values. df =df.dropna(axis=1, thresh=3) print(df) Names Sunday 0 Name1 2.0 1 Name2 NaN 2 Name3 3.0 3 Name4 3.0 

Conclusion:

  1. The thresh parameter from pd.dropna() doc gives you the flexibility to decide the range of non-Na values you want to keep in a row/column.
  2. The thresh parameter addresses a dataframe of the above given structure which df.dropna(how='all') does not.

Comments

0

To remove rows based on Nan value of particular column:

d= pd.DataFrame([[2,3],[4,None]]) #creating data frame d Output: 0 1 0 2 3.0 1 4 NaN 
d = d[np.isfinite(d[1])] #Select rows where value of 1st column is not nan d Output: 0 1 0 2 3.0 

Comments

0

dropna() is probably all you need for this, but creating a custom filter may also help or be easier to understand

import pandas as pd import numpy as np df = pd.DataFrame( [[4, 7, np.nan, np.nan], [5, np.nan, 11, 2], [6, 9, 12, np.nan]], index=[1, 2, 3], columns=['a', 'b', 'c', 'd']) print(f'starting matrix:\n{df}') #create the matrix of true/false NaNs: null_matrix = df.isnull() #create the sum of number of NaNs sum_null_matrix = null_matrix.T.sum().T #create the query of the matrix query_null = sum_null_matrix<2 #apply them to your matrix applied_df = df[query_null] print(f'query matrix:\n{query_null}') print(f'applied matrix:\n{applied_df}') 

and you get the result:

starting matrix: a b c d 1 4 7.0 NaN NaN 2 5 NaN 11.0 2.0 3 6 9.0 12.0 NaN query matrix: 1 False 2 True 3 True dtype: bool applied matrix: a b c d 2 5 NaN 11.0 2.0 3 6 9.0 12.0 NaN 

more info may be available on the nan checking answer: How to check if any value is NaN in a Pandas DataFrame

edit: dropna() has a threshold variable, but it doesn't have a min variable. This answer was for when someone needed to create a 'min NaNs' or some other custom function.

Comments

0

If you want to improve the readability of the code. We can have both values of Nan and notNan by using a bool series

bool_series=pd.notnull(dat["x"]) dat_notnull=dat[bool_series] dat_null =dat[~bool_series] 

2 Comments

Code is always good, but it also helps to add some comments/context about how this code answers the original question.
Please edit your answer to add an explanation of how your code works and how it solves the OP's problem. Many StackOverflow users are newbies and will not understand the code you have posted, so will not learn from your answer.

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