Introduction to the Polars DataFrame

Introduction to Polars

Liam Brannigan

Data Scientist and Polars Contributor

Meet your instructor

Liam Brannigan, Lead Data Scientist
ML and Data Engineering Specialist
Polars Contributor

Profile picture of the instructor.

Tabular data

shape: (49, 8)
| name        | type    | price | bedrooms | doubles | singles | review | beach |
| ---         | ---     | ---   | ---      | ---     | ---     | ---    | ---   |
| str         | str     | i64   | i64      | i64     | i64     | f64    | bool  |
|-------------|---------|-------|----------|---------|---------|--------|-------|
| Waves       | Cottage | 540   | 4        | 1       | 2       | 8.9    | false |
| Seashells   | Cottage | 540   | 4        | 2       | 2       | 8.7    | true  |
| Lake view   | Cottage | 714   | 3        | 1       | 4       | 9.2    | true  |
| Piran View  | null    | 775   | null     | 1       | 3       | 9.6    | false |
| Palma Villa | Cottage | 1772  | 4        | 1       | 2       | 9.6    | true  |

Side-by-image of a Polar Bear walking through snow and a Panda in a forest.

Polars is typically faster than Pandas → parallel computation
Polars lazy mode enables optimized queries

The Apache Arrow and Rust logos.

Apache Arrow: stores tabular data in memory
Rust: fast language for data processing

A schematic of a database to illustrate loading data.

Loading and inspecting data

A schematic of a database and some gears to illustrate a transformation.

Loading and inspecting data
Transforming data and optimization

A schematic of a database, some gears and a chart to illustrate analysis.

Loading and inspecting data
Transforming data and optimization
Analyzing data

Reading a CSV

import polars as pl


rentals = pl.read_csv("vacation_rentals.csv")

First rows of a DataFrame

rentals.head(3)

First rows of the rentals DataFrame.

First rows of a DataFrame

rentals.head(3)

The rentals DataFrame with the shape highlighted.

First rows of a DataFrame

rentals.head(3)

The rentals DataFrame with the first column highlighted.

dtype: the type of data in a column

First rows of a DataFrame

rentals.head(3)

The rentals DataFrame with the rentals column highlighted.

Last rows of a DataFrame

rentals.tail()

shape: (5, 8)
| name                | type      | price | bedrooms | doubles | singles | review | beach |
| ---                 | ---       | ---   | ---      | ---     | ---     | ---    | ---   |
| str                 | str       | i64   | i64      | i64     | i64     | f64    | bool  |
|---------------------|-----------|-------|----------|---------|---------|--------|-------|
| Hengar Manor House  | Cottage   | 615   | 4        | 1       | 5       | 9.4    | false |
| Tudor Cottage Hayle | Cottage   | 489   | 3        | 2       | 3       | 8.9    | false |
| Tolcarne Apartments | Apartment | 1764  | 3        | 1       | 4       | 9.3    | true  |
| Tolcarne Apartments | Apartment | 1605  | 3        | 1       | 4       | 9.3    | true  |
| Tehidy Holiday Park | Cottage   | 637   | 4        | 2       | 4       | 9.0    | false |

DataFrame metadata

rentals.shape

(49, 8)

rentals.columns

['name', 'type', 'price', 'bedrooms', 'doubles', 'singles', 'review', 'beach']

DataFrame schema

rentals.schema

Schema([('name', String),
        ('type', String),
        ('price', Int64),
        ('bedrooms', Int64),
        ('doubles', Int64),
        ('singles', Int64),
        ('review', Float64),
        ('beach', Boolean)])

Inspecting a DataFrame

rentals.glimpse()

Rows: 49
Columns: 8
$ name      <str> 'Waves', 'Seashells', 'Lake view', 'Piran View',...
$ type      <str> 'Cottage', 'Cottage', 'Cottage', None, 'Cottage',...
$ price     <i64> 540, 540, 714, 775, 1772, 934, 1947, 1026, 705, 863
$ bedrooms  <i64> 4, 4, 3, None, 4, 3, 4, 3, 4, 3
$ doubles   <i64> 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1
$ singles   <i64> 2, 2, 4, 3, 2, 4, 2, 4, 2, 2
$ review    <f64> 8.9, 8.7, 9.2, 9.6, 9.6, 8.6, 9.6, 8.6, 9.7, 9.1
$ beach    <bool> False, True, True, False, True, True, True, True, True, True

Let's practice!

Introduction to Polars