Binning is a common technique used to group a set of continuous or numeric values into discrete and finite intervals or bins. This technique is useful for simplifying the data visualization and analysis processes by reducing the number of distinct values in the dataset. In this thread, we will explore several efficient ways to bin a numeric series into 10 groups of equal sizes, using Python’s Pandas and NumPy libraries.
1. Using Pandas "cut()" method:
- The
pd.cut()function in Pandas to bin a numeric series into a specified number of equally sized bins. - It takes three main arguments: the series to be binned, the number of bins to create, and a boolean flag indicating whether the bins should be closed on the left, right, or neither (i.e., open on both ends). By default, the function creates closed bins on the right.
- The result is a series having an index as values of the original series and values of this series show the bin to which the original series values belong to.
2. Using Pandas "qcut()" method:
- The
pd.qcut()function in Pandas to bin a numeric series into equally sized bins based on quantiles. - It takes two main arguments: the series to be binned and the number of bins to create. This method creates bins of equal frequency based on the quantiles of the data. In other words, it ensures that each bin contains the same number of data points, but the bin boundaries may not be equidistant.
- The result of this method is the same as the method discussed above.
3. Using "np.histogram()" method:
- The
np.histogram()function divides the data into equally spaced bins and counts the number of values that fall within each bin. - It takes two main arguments: the data to be binned and the number of bins to use and it returns two arrays: an array of bin boundaries (
bin_edges) and an array of counts for each bin (hist). - A simple dataframe is created to show the results in a way that is easy to interpret.
4. Using "np.digitize()" and "np.linspace()" method:
- The
linspace()function in NumPy creates a one-dimensional array of evenly spaced numbers over a specified interval. In this method,np.linspace()is used to create an array of bin boundaries. - The
np.digitize()function then maps the values of the numeric series to the corresponding bins based on these boundaries. - A simple dataframe is again created to show the results in a way that is easy to interpret.