Pandas split column of lists into multiple columns

Question

I have a pandas DataFrame with one column:

import pandas as pd

df = pd.DataFrame(
    data={
        \"teams\": [
            


        

Answer 1

Based on the previous answers, here is another solution which returns the same result as df2.teams.apply(pd.Series) with a much faster run time:

pd.DataFrame([{x: y for x, y in enumerate(item)} for item in df2['teams'].values.tolist()], index=df2.index)

Timings:

In [1]:
import pandas as pd
d1 = {'teams': [['SF', 'NYG'],['SF', 'NYG'],['SF', 'NYG'],
                ['SF', 'NYG'],['SF', 'NYG'],['SF', 'NYG'],['SF', 'NYG']]}
df2 = pd.DataFrame(d1)
df2 = pd.concat([df2]*1000).reset_index(drop=True)

In [2]: %timeit df2['teams'].apply(pd.Series)

8.27 s ± 2.73 s per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1 loop each)

In [3]: %timeit pd.DataFrame([{x: y for x, y in enumerate(item)} for item in df2['teams'].values.tolist()], index=df2.index)

35.4 ms ± 5.22 ms per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 10 loops each)