Does pandas iterrows have performance issues?

Question

I have noticed very poor performance when using iterrows from pandas.

Is this something that is experienced by others? Is it specific to iterrows and should this fun

Answer 1

Vector operations in Numpy and pandas are much faster than scalar operations in vanilla Python for several reasons:

• Amortized type lookup: Python is a dynamically typed language, so there is runtime overhead for each element in an array. However, Numpy (and thus pandas) perform calculations in C (often via Cython). The type of the array is determined only at the start of the iteration; this savings alone is one of the biggest wins.

• Better caching: Iterating over a C array is cache-friendly and thus very fast. A pandas DataFrame is a "column-oriented table", which means that each column is really just an array. So the native actions you can perform on a DataFrame (like summing all the elements in a column) are going to have few cache misses.

• More opportunities for parallelism: A simple C array can be operated on via SIMD instructions. Some parts of Numpy enable SIMD, depending on your CPU and installation process. The benefits to parallelism won't be as dramatic as the static typing and better caching, but they're still a solid win.

Moral of the story: use the vector operations in Numpy and pandas. They are faster than scalar operations in Python for the simple reason that these operations are exactly what a C programmer would have written by hand anyway. (Except that the array notion is much easier to read than explicit loops with embedded SIMD instructions.)