Why does pandas.DataFrame.apply produces Series instead of DataFrame - pandas

Question

I do not really understand why from the following code pandas return is Series but not a DataFrame.
import pandas as pd
df = pd.DataFrame([[4,9]]*3, columns = ["A", "B"])
def plus_2(x):
y =[]
for i in range(0, len(x)):
y.append(x[i]+2)
return y
df_row = df.apply(plus_2, axis = 1) # Applied to each row
df_row
While if I change axis=0 it produces DataFrame as expected:
import pandas as pd
df = pd.DataFrame([[4,9]]*3, columns = ["A", "B"])
def plus_2(x):
y =[]
for i in range(0, len(x)):
y.append(x[i]+2)
return y
df_row = df.apply(plus_2, axis = 0) # Applied to each row
df_row
Here is the output:

Answer 1

In first example where you put axis=1 you implement on row level.
It means that for each row plus_2 function returns y which is list of two element (but list as a whole is single element so this is pd.Series).
Based on your example it will be returned 3x list (2 element each). Here single list if single row.
You could expand this result and create two columns (each element from list will be new column) by adding result_type="expand" in apply:
df_row = df.apply(lambda x: plus_2(x), axis=1, result_type="expand")
# output
0 1
0 6 11
1 6 11
2 6 11
In second approach you have axis=0 co this is applied on column level.
It means that for each column plus_2 function returns y, so plus_2 is applied twice, separately for A column and for B column. This is why it returns dataframe: your input is DataFrame with columns A and B, each column applies plus_2 function and returns A and B columns as result of plus_2 functions applied.
Based on your example it will be returned 2x list (3 element each). Here single list is single column.
So the main difference between axis=1 and axis=0 is that:
if you applied on row level apply will return:
[6, 11]
[6, 11]
[6, 11]
if you applied on column level apply will return:
[6, 6, 6]
[11, 11, 11]