how to get the average of dataframe column values

Question

                    A        B
DATE                 
2013-05-01        473077    71333
2013-05-02         35131    62441
2013-05-03           727    27381
2013-05-04         


        

Answer 1

Simply using df.mean() will Do The Right Thing(tm) with respect to NaNs:

>>> df
                 A      B
DATE                     
2013-05-01  473077  71333
2013-05-02   35131  62441
2013-05-03     727  27381
2013-05-04     481   1206
2013-05-05     226   1733
2013-05-06     NaN   4064
2013-05-07     NaN  41151
2013-05-08     NaN   8144
2013-05-09     NaN     23
2013-05-10     NaN     10
>>> df.mean(axis=1)
DATE
2013-05-01    272205.0
2013-05-02     48786.0
2013-05-03     14054.0
2013-05-04       843.5
2013-05-05       979.5
2013-05-06      4064.0
2013-05-07     41151.0
2013-05-08      8144.0
2013-05-09        23.0
2013-05-10        10.0
dtype: float64

You can use df[["A", "B"]].mean(axis=1) if there are other columns to ignore.