Dask apply with custom function

Question

I am experimenting with Dask, but I encountered a problem while using apply after grouping.

I have a Dask DataFrame with a large number of rows. Let\'s

Answer 1

Maybe this warning is the key (Dask doc: SeriesGroupBy.apply) :

Pandas’ groupby-apply can be used to to apply arbitrary functions, including aggregations that result in one row per group. Dask’s groupby-apply will apply func once to each partition-group pair, so when func is a reduction you’ll end up with one row per partition-group pair. To apply a custom aggregation with Dask, use dask.dataframe.groupby.Aggregation.

Answer 2

You are right! I was able to reproduce your problem on Dask 2.11.0. The good news is that there's a solution! It appears that the Dask groupby problem is specifically with the category type (pandas.core.dtypes.dtypes.CategoricalDtype). By casting the category column to another column type (float, int, str), then the groupby will work correctly.

Here's your code that I copied:

import dask.dataframe as dd
import pandas as pd
import numpy as np


def test_f(df, col, bins, labels):
    return df.assign(bin_num=pd.cut(df[col], bins, labels=labels))

N = 10000
df = pd.DataFrame({'col_1': np.random.random(N), 'col_2': np.random.random(N)})
ddf = dd.from_pandas(df, npartitions=8)

bins = np.linspace(0,1,11)
labels = list(range(len(bins)-1))
ddf2 = ddf.map_partitions(test_f, 'col_1', bins, labels)

print(ddf2.groupby('bin_num')['col_1'].apply(pd.Series.median).compute())

which prints out the problem you mentioned

bin_num
0         NaN
1         NaN
2         NaN
3         NaN
4         NaN
       ...   
5    0.550844
6    0.651036
7    0.751220
8         NaN
9         NaN
Name: col_1, Length: 80, dtype: float64

Here's my solution:

ddf3 = ddf2.copy()
ddf3["bin_num"] = ddf3["bin_num"].astype("int")

print(ddf3.groupby('bin_num')['col_1'].apply(pd.Series.median).compute())

which printed:

bin_num
9    0.951369
2    0.249150
1    0.149563
0    0.049897
3    0.347906
8    0.847819
4    0.449029
5    0.550608
6    0.652778
7    0.749922
Name: col_1, dtype: float64

@MRocklin or @TomAugspurger Would you be able to create a fix for this in a new release? I think there is sufficient reproducible code here. Thanks for all your hard work. I love Dask and use it every day ;)