Python: obtaining the first observation according to its date [duplicate] - pandas

Question

I have a DataFrame with columns A, B, and C. For each value of A, I would like to select the row with the minimum value in column B.
That is, from this:
df = pd.DataFrame({'A': [1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2],
'B': [4, 5, 2, 7, 4, 6],
'C': [3, 4, 10, 2, 4, 6]})
A B C
0 1 4 3
1 1 5 4
2 1 2 10
3 2 7 2
4 2 4 4
5 2 6 6
I would like to get:
A B C
0 1 2 10
1 2 4 4
For the moment I am grouping by column A, then creating a value that indicates to me the rows I will keep:
a = data.groupby('A').min()
a['A'] = a.index
to_keep = [str(x[0]) + str(x[1]) for x in a[['A', 'B']].values]
data['id'] = data['A'].astype(str) + data['B'].astype('str')
data[data['id'].isin(to_keep)]
I am sure that there is a much more straightforward way to do this.
I have seen many answers here that use MultiIndex, which I would prefer to avoid.
Thank you for your help.

Answer 1

I feel like you're overthinking this. Just use groupby and idxmin:
df.loc[df.groupby('A').B.idxmin()]
A B C
2 1 2 10
4 2 4 4
df.loc[df.groupby('A').B.idxmin()].reset_index(drop=True)
A B C
0 1 2 10
1 2 4 4

Answer 2

Had a similar situation but with a more complex column heading (e.g. "B val") in which case this is needed:
df.loc[df.groupby('A')['B val'].idxmin()]

Answer 3

The accepted answer (suggesting idxmin) cannot be used with the pipe pattern. A pipe-friendly alternative is to first sort values and then use groupby with DataFrame.head:
data.sort_values('B').groupby('A').apply(DataFrame.head, n=1)
This is possible because by default groupby preserves the order of rows within each group, which is stable and documented behaviour (see pandas.DataFrame.groupby).
This approach has additional benefits:
it can be easily expanded to select n rows with smallest values in specific column
it can break ties by providing another column (as a list) to .sort_values(), e.g.:
data.sort_values(['final_score', 'midterm_score']).groupby('year').apply(DataFrame.head, n=1)
As with other answers, to exactly match the result desired in the question .reset_index(drop=True) is needed, making the final snippet:
df.sort_values('B').groupby('A').apply(DataFrame.head, n=1).reset_index(drop=True)

Answer 4

I found an answer a little bit more wordy, but a lot more efficient:
This is the example dataset:
data = pd.DataFrame({'A': [1,1,1,2,2,2], 'B':[4,5,2,7,4,6], 'C':[3,4,10,2,4,6]})
data
Out:
A B C
0 1 4 3
1 1 5 4
2 1 2 10
3 2 7 2
4 2 4 4
5 2 6 6
First we will get the min values on a Series from a groupby operation:
min_value = data.groupby('A').B.min()
min_value
Out:
A
1 2
2 4
Name: B, dtype: int64
Then, we merge this series result on the original data frame
data = data.merge(min_value, on='A',suffixes=('', '_min'))
data
Out:
A B C B_min
0 1 4 3 2
1 1 5 4 2
2 1 2 10 2
3 2 7 2 4
4 2 4 4 4
5 2 6 6 4
Finally, we get only the lines where B is equal to B_min and drop B_min since we don't need it anymore.
data = data[data.B==data.B_min].drop('B_min', axis=1)
data
Out:
A B C
2 1 2 10
4 2 4 4
I have tested it on very large datasets and this was the only way I could make it work in a reasonable time.

Answer 5

You can sort_values and drop_duplicates:
df.sort_values('B').drop_duplicates('A')
Output:
A B C
2 1 2 10
4 2 4 4

Answer 6

The solution is, as written before ;
df.loc[df.groupby('A')['B'].idxmin()]
If the solution but then if you get an error;
"Passing list-likes to .loc or [] with any missing labels is no longer supported.
The following labels were missing: Float64Index([nan], dtype='float64').
See https://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/user_guide/indexing.html#deprecate-loc-reindex-listlike"
In my case, there were 'NaN' values at column B. So, I used 'dropna()' then it worked.
df.loc[df.groupby('A')['B'].idxmin().dropna()]

Answer 7

You can also boolean indexing the rows where B column is minimal value
out = df[df['B'] == df.groupby('A')['B'].transform('min')]
print(out)
A B C
2 1 2 10
4 2 4 4