How to Compare Two Rows in Python

Throughout this tutorial, you will acquire an understanding of how to compare two rows in Python. Python has a wide range of applications and one of them is data analysis. In data analysis, there are numerous situations where you will need to compare rows in a dataset to draw conclusions or gain insights.

This tutorial will walk you through the necessary steps and demonstrate it with an example. Ready to start? Let’s dive in!

Step 1: Import the Necessary Libraries:

Before we begin, it is important to import the necessary libraries. In this case, we will need Pandas, which is an open-source data analysis and manipulation tool.

1
import pandas as pd

Step 2: Create the DataFrame:

For this demonstration, we will create a simple DataFrame. We’ll create a DataFrame with 5 rows and 3 columns.

1
2
3
4
5
6
data = {
    'Name': ['Tom', 'Nick', 'John', 'Tom', 'John'],
    'Age': [20, 21, 19, 20, 19],
    'City': ['New York', 'London', 'New York', 'London', 'New York']
}
df = pd.DataFrame(data)

After these lines of code, we have a dataframe that looks like this:

  Name  Age       City
0  Tom   20   New York
1  Nick  21     London
2  John  19   New York
3  Tom   20     London
4  John  19   New York

Step 3: Compare Two Rows of the DataFrame:

Let’s say we want to compare the first row and the fourth row. This can be done using the == operator, which will return True for each equivalent element and False otherwise.

1
2
comparison = df.loc[0] == df.loc[3]
print(comparison)

Output:

Name    True
Age     True
City    False
dtype: bool

Full Python Code:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
import pandas as pd
 
data = {
    'Name': ['Tom', 'Nick', 'John', 'Tom', 'John'],
    'Age': [20, 21, 19, 20, 19],
    'City': ['New York', 'London', 'New York', 'London', 'New York']
}
df = pd.DataFrame(data)
comparison = df.loc[0] == df.loc[3]
print(comparison)

Conclusion:

Comparing two rows in Python is a fundamental task in data analysis and it can be successfully performed using the Pandas library. In this tutorial, we saw how to use the == operator to make an element-wise comparison. This is very useful when we want to understand the differences between the different rows in our dataset.