python - Pandas dataframe with multiindex column - merge levels

Question

I have a dataframe, grouped, with multiindex columns as below:

import pandas as pd
codes = ["one","two","three"];
colours = ["black", "white"];
textures = ["soft", "hard"];
N= 100 # length of the dataframe
df = pd.DataFrame({ 'id' : range(1,N+1),
                    'weeks_elapsed' : [random.choice(range(1,25)) for i in range(1,N+1)],
                    'code' : [random.choice(codes) for i in range(1,N+1)],
                    'colour': [random.choice(colours) for i in range(1,N+1)],
                    'texture': [random.choice(textures) for i in range(1,N+1)],
                    'size': [random.randint(1,100) for i in range(1,N+1)],
                    'scaled_size': [random.randint(100,1000) for i in range(1,N+1)]
                   },  columns= ['id', 'weeks_elapsed', 'code','colour', 'texture', 'size', 'scaled_size'])
grouped = df.groupby(['code', 'colour']).agg( {'size': [np.sum, np.average, np.size, pd.Series.idxmax],'scaled_size': [np.sum, np.average, np.size, pd.Series.idxmax]}).reset_index()

>> grouped
    code colour     size                           scaled_size                         
                    sum    average  size  idxmax            sum    average  size  idxmax
0    one  black    1031  60.647059    17      81     185.153944  10.891408    17      47
1    one  white     481  37.000000    13      53     204.139249  15.703019    13      53
2  three  black     822  48.352941    17       6     123.269405   7.251141    17      31
3  three  white    1614  57.642857    28      50     285.638337  10.201369    28      37
4    two  black     523  58.111111     9      85      80.908912   8.989879     9      88
5    two  white     669  41.812500    16      78      82.098870   5.131179    16      78
[6 rows x 10 columns]

How can I flatten/merge the column index levels as: "Level1|Level2", e.g. size|sum, scaled_size|sum. etc? If this is not possible, is there a way to groupby() as I did above without creating multi-index columns?

Answer 1

There is potentially a better way, more pythonic way to flatten MultiIndex columns.

1. Use map and join with string column headers:

grouped.columns = grouped.columns.map('|'.join).str.strip('|')

print(grouped)

Output:

   code  colour   size|sum  size|average  size|size  size|idxmax  
0    one   black       862     53.875000         16           14   
1    one   white       554     46.166667         12           18   
2  three   black       842     49.529412         17           90   
3  three   white       740     56.923077         13           97   
4    two   black      1541     61.640000         25           50   

   scaled_size|sum  scaled_size|average  scaled_size|size  scaled_size|idxmax  
0             6980           436.250000                16                  77  
1             6101           508.416667                12                  13  
2             7889           464.058824                17                  64  
3             6329           486.846154                13                  73  
4            12809           512.360000                25                  23  

2. Use map with format for column headers that have numeric data types.

grouped.columns = grouped.columns.map('{0[0]}|{0[1]}'.format) 

Output:

   code| colour|  size|sum  size|average  size|size  size|idxmax  
0    one   black       734     52.428571         14           30   
1    one   white      1110     65.294118         17           88   
2  three   black       930     51.666667         18            3   
3  three   white      1140     51.818182         22           20   
4    two   black       656     38.588235         17           77   
5    two   white       704     58.666667         12           17   

   scaled_size|sum  scaled_size|average  scaled_size|size  scaled_size|idxmax  
0             8229           587.785714                14                  57  
1             8781           516.529412                17                  73  
2            10743           596.833333                18                  21  
3            10240           465.454545                22                  26  
4             9982           587.176471                17                  16  
5             6537           544.750000                12                  49 

3. Use list comprehension with f-string for Python 3.6+:

grouped.columns = [f'{i}|{j}' if j != '' else f'{i}' for i,j in grouped.columns]

Output:

    code colour  size|sum  size|average  size|size  size|idxmax  
0    one  black      1003     43.608696         23           76   
1    one  white      1255     59.761905         21           66   
2  three  black       777     45.705882         17           39   
3  three  white       630     52.500000         12           23   
4    two  black       823     54.866667         15           33   
5    two  white       491     40.916667         12           64   

   scaled_size|sum  scaled_size|average  scaled_size|size  scaled_size|idxmax  
0            12532           544.869565                23                  27  
1            13223           629.666667                21                  13  
2             8615           506.764706                17                  92  
3             6101           508.416667                12                  43  
4             7661           510.733333                15                  42  
5             6143           511.916667                12                  49