Selecting Series data

Series and DataFrames are complex data containers that have multiple attributes that use an index operation to select data in different ways. In addition to the index operator itself, the .iloc and .loc attributes are available and use the index operator in their own unique ways.

Series and DataFrames allow selection by position (like Python lists) and by label (like Python dictionaries). When we index off of the .iloc attribute, pandas selects only by position and works similarly to Python lists. The .loc attribute selects only by index label, which is similar to how Python dictionaries work.

The .loc and .iloc attributes are available on both Series and DataFrames. This recipe shows how to select Series data by position with .iloc and by label with .loc. These indexers accept scalar values, lists, and slices.

The terminology can get confusing. An index operation is when you put brackets, [], following a variable. For instance, given a Series s,...