Filling previous value by field - Pandas apply function filling None - pandas

Question

I am trying to fill each row in a new column (Previous time) with a value from previous row of the specific subset (when condition is met). The thing is, that if I interrupt kernel and check values, it is ok. But if it runs to the end, then all rows in new column are filled with None. If previous row doesnt exist, than I will fill it with first value.
Name First round Previous time
Runner 1 2 2
Runner 2 5 5
Runner 3 5 5
Runner 1 6 2
Runner 2 8 5
Runner 3 4 5
Runner 1 2 6
Runner 2 5 8
Runner 3 5 4
What I tried:
df.insert(column = "Previous time", value = 999)
def fce(arg):
runner= arg[0]
stat = arg[1]
if stat == 999:
# I used this to avoid filling all rows in a new column again for the same runner
first = df.loc[df['Name'] == runner,"First round"].iloc[0]
df.loc[df['Name'] == runner,"Previous time"] = df.loc[df['Name'] == runner]["First round"].shift(1, fill_value = first)
df["Previous time"] = df[['Name', "Previous time"]].apply(fce, axis=1)

Answer 1

Condut gruopby shift for each Name and fill the missing values with the original series.
df['Previous time'] = (df.groupby('Name')['First round']
.shift()
.fillna(df['First round'], downcast='infer'))

Answer 2

The problem is that your function fce returns None for every row, so the Series produced by the term df[['Name', "Previous time"]].apply(fce, axis=1) is a Series of None.
That is, instead of overriding the Dataframe with df.loc inside the function, you need to return the value to fill for this position. Unfortunately, this is impossible since then you need to know which indices you already calculated.
A better way to do it would be to use groupby. This is a more natural way, since you want to perform an action on each group. If you use apply after groupby and you to return a series, you, in fact, define a value for each row. Just remember to remove the extra index "Name" that groupby adds.
def fce(g):
first = g["First round"].iloc[0]
return g["First round"].shift(1, fill_value=first)
df["Previous time"] == df.groupby("Name").apply(fce).reset_index("Name", drop=True)

Answer 3

Thank you very much. Please can you answer me one more question? How does it work with group by on multiple columns if I want to return mean of all rounds based on specific runner a sleeping time before race.
Expected output:
Name First round Sleep before race Mean
Runner 1 2 8 4
Runner 2 5 7 6
Runner 3 5 8 5
Runner 1 6 8 4
Runner 2 8 7 6
Runner 3 4 9 4,5
Runner 1 2 9 2
Runner 2 5 7 6
Runner 3 5 9 4,5
This does not work for me.
def last_season(g):
aa = g["First round"].mean()
df["Mean"] = df.groupby(["Name", "Sleep before race"]).apply(g).reset_index(["Name", "Sleep before race"], drop=True)