Problem: "argument of type 'float' is not iterable" when iterate rows in Pandas

1
votes

I'm trying to iterate each row in a Pandas dataframe named 'cd'. If a specific cell, e.g. [row,empl_accept] in a row contains a substring, then updates the value of an other cell, e.g.[row,empl_accept_a] in the same dataframe.

for row in range(0,len(cd.index),1):
    if 'Master' in cd.at[row,empl_accept]:
        cd.at[row,empl_accept_a] = '1'
    else:
        cd.at[row,empl_accept_a] = '0'

The code above not working and jupyter notebook displays the error:

TypeError                                 Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-70-21b1f73e320c> in <module>
      1 for row in range(0,len(cd.index),1):
----> 2     if 'Master' in cd.at[row,empl_accept]:
      3         cd.at[row,empl_accept_a] = '1'
      4     else:
      5         cd.at[row,empl_accept_a] = '0'

TypeError: argument of type 'float' is not iterable

I'm not really sure what is the problem there as the for loop contains no float variable.

2
pythonpandas

2 Answers

1
votes

Please do not use loops for this. You can do this in bulk with:

cd['empl_accept_a'] = cd['empl_accept'].str.contains('Master').astype(int).astype(str)

This will store '0' and '1' in the column. That being said, I am not convinced if storing this as strings is a good idea. You can just store these as bools with:

cd['empl_accept_a'] = cd['empl_accept'].str.contains('Master')

For example:

>>> cd
    empl_accept  empl_accept_a
0        Master           True
1         Slave          False
2         Slave          False
3  Master Windu           True
0
votes

You need to check in your dataframe what value is placed at [row,empl_accept]. I'm sure there will be some numeric value at this location in your dataframe. Just print the value and you'll see the problem if any.

 print (cd.at[row,empl_accept])