Pandas Skill

## When to Use This Skill

Activate this skill when the user requests:

- Data cleaning operations (handling missing values, duplicates, outliers)
- Data analysis and statistical summaries
- Format conversions (CSV ↔ Excel ↔ JSON ↔ Parquet)
- Data transformation (filtering, sorting, aggregation, pivoting)
- Merging or combining multiple datasets
- Generating data quality reports
- Any pandas DataFrame operations

## Core Capabilities

### 1. Data Cleaning (`scripts/data_cleaner.py`)

Handles common data cleaning tasks with a single command:

**Usage:**
```bash
python scripts/data_cleaner.py input.csv output.csv [options]
```

**Available Options:**
- `--remove-duplicates`: Remove duplicate rows
- `--handle-missing [strategy]`: Handle missing values
  - Strategies: `drop`, `fill`, `forward`, `backward`, `mean`, `median`
- `--fill-value [value]`: Custom fill value for missing data
- `--remove-outliers`: Remove outliers using IQR or Z-score method
- `--outlier-method [method]`: Choose `iqr` or `zscore` (default: iqr)
- `--standardize-columns`: Standardize column names (lowercase, underscores)

**Example:**
```bash
python scripts/data_cleaner.py data.csv cleaned_data.csv \
    --remove-duplicates \
    --handle-missing mean \
    --remove-outliers \
    --standardize-columns
```

### 2. Data Analysis (`scripts/data_analyzer.py`)

Generates comprehensive data analysis reports:

**Usage:**
```bash
python scripts/data_analyzer.py input.csv [options]
```

**Available Options:**
- `--output, -o [file]`: Save report to file
- `--format [format]`: Output format (`json` or `text`, default: json)

**Report Includes:**
- Basic information (rows, columns, memory usage)
- Data type distribution
- Missing values analysis
- Numeric column statistics (mean, std, min, max, quartiles, skewness, kurtosis)
- Categorical column statistics (unique values, value counts)
- Correlation analysis
- Outlier detection

**Example:**
```bash
python scripts/data_analyzer.py sales_data.csv -o report.json --format json
```

### 3. Data Transformation (`scripts/data_transformer.py`)

Performs various data transformation operations through subcommands:

#### Convert Format
```bash
python scripts/data_transformer.py convert input.csv output.xlsx
```
Supports: CSV, Excel (.xlsx/.xls), JSON, Parquet, HTML

#### Merge Files
```bash
python scripts/data_transformer.py merge file1.csv file2.csv file3.csv \
    --output merged.csv \
    --how outer \
    --on key_column
```

#### Filter Data
```bash
python scripts/data_transformer.py filter data.csv \
    --query "age > 18 and city == 'Beijing'" \
    --output filtered.csv
```

#### Sort Data
```bash
python scripts/data_transformer.py sort data.csv \
    --by sales quantity \
    --descending \
    --output sorted.csv
```

#### Select Columns
```bash
python scripts/data_transformer.py select data.csv \
    --columns name age city \
    --output selected.csv
```

## Reference Documentation

The `references/` directory contains detailed documentation:

### `references/common_operations.md`

Comprehensive reference covering:
- Data reading/saving (CSV, Excel, JSON, SQL, Parquet)
- Data exploration (head, info, describe, dtypes)
- Data selection and filtering (loc, iloc, boolean indexing, query)
- Data cleaning (handling missing/duplicate values, type conversion)
- Data transformation (apply, map, sorting, column operations)
- Groupby and aggregation operations
- Pivot tables
- Merging and joining (concat, merge, join)
- Time series operations
- String operations
- Performance optimization tips

**When to use:** When Claude needs to understand pandas syntax or find the right method for a specific operation.

### `references/data_cleaning_best_practices.md`

Best practices guide covering:
- Data quality check checklist
- Missing value handling strategies with decision tree
- Outlier detection methods (IQR, Z-Score, percentile)
- Data type optimization for memory efficiency
- String cleaning techniques
- Date/time standardization
- Complete cleaning pipeline template
- Common problems and solutions
- Data validation methods

**When to use:** When designing a data cleaning workflow or deciding on the best approach for specific data quality issues.

## Workflow Guidelines

### Step 1: Initial Assessment
Always start by analyzing the data:
```bash
python scripts/data_analyzer.py input_file.csv -o analysis_report.json
```
Review the report to understand data quality, types, missing values, and potential issues.

### Step 2: Plan Cleaning Strategy
Based on the analysis report:
- Identify missing value strategy (reference: `data_cleaning_best_practices.md`)
- Determine if duplicates should be removed
- Decide on outlier handling approach
- Plan any necessary type conversions

### Step 3: Execute Cleaning
Run the data cleaner with appropriate options:
```bash
python scripts/data_cleaner.py input.csv cleaned.csv [options]
```

### Step 4: Transform as Needed
Apply any transformations (filtering, sorting, format conversion, merging):
```bash
python scripts/data_transformer.py [subcommand] [options]
```

### Step 5: Validate Results
Re-run analysis on the cleaned data to verify improvements:
```bash
python scripts/data_analyzer.py cleaned.csv -o final_report.json
```

## Common Patterns

### Pattern 1: Quick Data Quality Report
```bash
python scripts/data_analyzer.py data.csv --format text
```

### Pattern 2: Standard Cleaning Pipeline
```bash
python scripts/data_cleaner.py raw_data.csv clean_data.csv \
    --standardize-columns \
    --remove-duplicates \
    --handle-missing median \
    --remove-outliers
```

### Pattern 3: Excel to CSV with Filtering
```bash
# Convert
python scripts/data_transformer.py convert data.xlsx data.csv

# Filter
python scripts/data_transformer.py filter data.csv \
    --query "status == 'active'" \
    --output filtered.csv
```

### Pattern 4: Merge Multiple CSVs
```bash
python scripts/data_transformer.py merge *.csv \
    --output combined.csv
```

## Dependencies

Ensure pandas is installed:
```bash
pip install pandas numpy openpyxl
```

Optional for specific formats:
```bash
pip install pyarrow  # For Parquet support
pip install xlrd     # For older Excel files (.xls)
```

## Tips for Effective Use

1. **Start with analysis:** Always run the analyzer first to understand the data
2. **Incremental cleaning:** Apply cleaning operations step by step, verify each step
3. **Preserve originals:** Never overwrite original data files
4. **Check references:** Consult reference docs for complex operations or best practices
5. **Validate results:** Use the analyzer to verify cleaning effectiveness
6. **Memory efficiency:** For large files, consider using the data type optimization techniques in the reference docs
7. **Combine operations:** Chain multiple transformer commands for complex workflows

## Limitations

- Scripts work with single-machine memory constraints (for very large datasets, consider Dask)
- Time series resampling and rolling operations require custom pandas code
- Complex statistical modeling beyond basic descriptive statistics requires additional libraries
- For advanced visualizations, use matplotlib/seaborn directly

## Troubleshooting

**Import errors:** Ensure pandas and dependencies are installed
**Memory errors:** Process data in chunks or optimize dtypes (see references)
**Encoding issues:** Add `encoding='utf-8'` parameter when loading CSVs
**Date parsing issues:** Use `pd.to_datetime()` with explicit format string

For detailed pandas operations and troubleshooting, always refer to `references/common_operations.md` and `references/data_cleaning_best_practices.md`.