How to transform variables in a pandas DataFrame

Ways to derive and modify variables to make it fit-for-purpose

Whether it’s for preparing data to extract insights or for engineering features for a model, I think one of the fundamental skills for individuals working with data is their ability to reliably transform data to the desired format. As part of data cleaning, data preparation, data munging, data manipulation, data wrangling, data enriching, data preprocessing (whew! 😅), there is often a need to transform variables/columns/features to a more…