passing operators to pandas dataframe in function:

Question

Say I want to iterate say I have pandas dataframe:

import pandas as pd
tmp = pd.DataFrame([(2,2),(0,4),(1,3)],columns= ['A','B'])

and I want to write something of the following kind:

def f(operator,column)

s.t

f('mean','A')

will return:

tmp['A'].mean()

Answer 1

As the complement of @mozway answer, you can use agg:

>>> tmp.agg({'A': 'mean', 'B': 'max'})
A    1.0
B    4.0
dtype: float64

Take a look at the last lines of code of agg here: it already uses getattr.

Answer 2

IIUC, use getattr:

tmp = pd.DataFrame([(2,2),(0,4),(1,3)], columns=['A','B'])

def f(operator, column):
    return getattr(tmp[column], operator)()

f('mean', 'A')
# 1.0

f('max', 'B')
# 4