Subtract a Series from a DataFrame while keeping the DataFrame struct intact

Question

How can I subtract a Series from a DataFrame, while keeping the DataFrame struct intact?

df = pd.DataFrame(np.zeros((5,3)))
s = pd.Series(np.ones(5))

df - s         


        

Answer 1

Maybe:

>>> df = pd.DataFrame(np.zeros((5,3)))
>>> s = pd.Series(np.ones(5))
>>> df.sub(s,axis=0)
   0  1  2
0 -1 -1 -1
1 -1 -1 -1
2 -1 -1 -1
3 -1 -1 -1
4 -1 -1 -1

[5 rows x 3 columns]

or, for a more interesting example:

>>> s = pd.Series(np.arange(5))
>>> df.sub(s,axis=0)
   0  1  2
0  0  0  0
1 -1 -1 -1
2 -2 -2 -2
3 -3 -3 -3
4 -4 -4 -4

[5 rows x 3 columns]

Answer 2

If a1 is a dataframe made of n columns and a2 is a another dataframe made by just 1 column, you can subtract a2 from each column of a1 using numpy

np.subtract(a1, a2)

You can achieve the same result if a2 is a Series making sure to transform to DataFrame

np.subtract(a1, a2.to_frame()) 

I guess that, before computing this operation, you need to make sure the indices in the two dataframes are coherent/overlapping. As a matter of fact, the above operations will work if a1 and a2 have the same number of rows and different indices. You can try

a1 = pd.DataFrame([[1, 2], [3, 4]], columns=['a','b'])
a2 = pd.DataFrame([[1], [2]], columns=['c'])

np.subtract(a1, a2)

and

a1 = pd.DataFrame([[1, 2], [3, 4]], columns=['a','b'])
a2 = pd.DataFrame([[1], [2]], columns=['c'], index=[3,4])

np.subtract(a1,a2)

will give you the same result.

For this reason, to make sure the two DataFrames are coherent, you could preprocess using something like:

def align_dataframes(df1, df2):
    r = pd.concat([df1, df2], axis=1, join_axes=[df1.index])
    return r.loc[:,df1.columns], r.loc[:,df2.columns]

Answer 3

I'll throw in an example that modifies a subset of the a DataFrame

df = pd.DataFrame(np.arange(20).reshape((2,10)),columns=list('abcdefghjk'))

>>> df
    a   b   c   d   e   f   g   h   j   k
0   0   1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9
1  10  11  12  13  14  15  16  17  18  19

# Series to be subtracted    
dif = df['g'] - df['h']

>>> dif
0   -1
1   -1
dtype: int32

# subtract the Series from columns 'g','h','j','k'
df.loc[:,'g':] = df.loc[:,'g':].subtract(dif,axis='rows')
#df.loc[:,'g':] = df.loc[:,'g':].subtract(dif,axis=0)

>>> df
    a   b   c   d   e   f   g   h   j   k
0   0   1   2   3   4   5   7   8   9  10
1  10  11  12  13  14  15  17  18  19  20