How to Drop Pandas Rows

Suraj Joshi Feb 02, 2024

Pandas Pandas DataFrame Row

Drop Rows by the Index in the pandas.DataFrame.drop() Method
Drop Rows Depending Upon the Value of a Particular Column in Pandas DataFrame

This tutorial explains how we can drop rows in Pandas using the pandas.DataFrame.drop() method.

import pandas as pd

kgp_df = pd.DataFrame(
    {
        "Name": ["Himansh", "Prateek", "Abhishek", "Vidit", "Anupam"],
        "Age": [30, 33, 35, 30, 30],
        "Weight(KG)": [75, 75, 80, 70, 73],
    }
)
print("The KGP DataFrame is:")
print(kgp_df)

Output:

The KGP DataFrame is:
       Name  Age  Weight(KG)
0   Himansh   30          75
1   Prateek   33          75
2  Abhishek   35          80
3     Vidit   30          70
4    Anupam   30          73

We will use the kgp_df DataFrame to explain how we can drop rows from the Pandas DataFrame.

Drop Rows by the Index in the `pandas.DataFrame.drop()` Method

import pandas as pd

kgp_df = pd.DataFrame(
    {
        "Name": ["Himansh", "Prateek", "Abhishek", "Vidit", "Anupam"],
        "Age": [30, 33, 35, 30, 30],
        "Weight(KG)": [75, 75, 80, 70, 73],
    }
)

rows_dropped_df = kgp_df.drop(kgp_df.index[[0, 2]])

print("The KGP DataFrame is:")
print(kgp_df, "\n")

print("The KGP DataFrame after dropping 1st and 3rd DataFrame is:")
print(rows_dropped_df)

Output:

The KGP DataFrame is:
       Name  Age  Weight(KG)
0   Himansh   30          75
1   Prateek   33          75
2  Abhishek   35          80
3     Vidit   30          70
4    Anupam   30          73

The KGP DataFrame after dropping 1st and 3rd DataFrame is:
      Name  Age  Weight(KG)
1  Prateek   33          75
3    Vidit   30          70
4   Anupam   30          73

It drops the rows with indices 0 and 2 from the kgp_df DataFrame. The rows with indices 0 and 2 correspond to the first and third row in the DataFrame because the index starts from 0.

We can also use the index of the DataFrame to delete the rows instead of using the default index.

import pandas as pd

kgp_idx = ["A", "B", "C", "D", "E"]
kgp_df = pd.DataFrame(
    {
        "Name": ["Himansh", "Prateek", "Abhishek", "Vidit", "Anupam"],
        "Age": [30, 33, 35, 30, 30],
        "Weight(KG)": [75, 75, 80, 70, 73],
    },
    index=kgp_idx,
)

rows_dropped_df = kgp_df.drop(["A", "C"])

print("The KGP DataFrame is:")
print(kgp_df, "\n")

print("The KGP DataFrame after dropping 1st and 3rd DataFrame is:")
print(rows_dropped_df)

Output:

The KGP DataFrame is:
       Name  Age  Weight(KG)
A   Himansh   30          75
B   Prateek   33          75
C  Abhishek   35          80
D     Vidit   30          70
E    Anupam   30          73

The KGP DataFrame after dropping 1st and 3rd DataFrame is:
      Name  Age  Weight(KG)
B  Prateek   33          75
D    Vidit   30          70
E   Anupam   30          73

It drops the rows with index A and C, or the first and third row from the DataFrame.

We pass the list of index of the rows to be dropped to the drop() method to delete the respective rows.

Drop Rows Depending Upon the Value of a Particular Column in Pandas DataFrame

import pandas as pd

kgp_idx = ["A", "B", "C", "D", "E"]
kgp_df = pd.DataFrame(
    {
        "Name": ["Himansh", "Prateek", "Abhishek", "Vidit", "Anupam"],
        "Age": [31, 33, 35, 36, 34],
        "Weight(KG)": [75, 75, 80, 70, 73],
    },
    index=kgp_idx,
)

young_df_idx = kgp_df[kgp_df["Age"] <= 33].index
young_folks = kgp_df.drop(young_df_idx)

print("The KGP DataFrame is:")
print(kgp_df, "\n")

print("The DataFrame of folks with age less than or equal to 33 are:")
print(young_folks)

Output:

The KGP DataFrame is:
       Name  Age  Weight(KG)
A   Himansh   31          75
B   Prateek   33          75
C  Abhishek   35          80
D     Vidit   36          70
E    Anupam   34          73

The DataFrame of folks with age less than or equal to 33 are:
       Name  Age  Weight(KG)
C  Abhishek   35          80
D     Vidit   36          70
E    Anupam   34          73

It will drop all the rows with age less than or equal to 33.

We first find the index of all the rows with age less than or equal to 33 and then drop the rows using the drop() method.

Author: Suraj Joshi

Suraj Joshi is a backend software engineer at Matrice.ai.

Drop Rows by the Index in the pandas.DataFrame.drop() Method

Drop Rows Depending Upon the Value of a Particular Column in Pandas DataFrame

Related Article - Pandas DataFrame Row

Drop Rows by the Index in the `pandas.DataFrame.drop()` Method