Error when trying to calculate mean for a series column in dataframe

Question

I'm trying to calculate the mean of a column which contains a lists/series but get an error while doing so. The example dataframe as follows:

import pandas as pd
df = pd.DataFrame({'a': [[1,2,3]]})
df ['a'].mean()

The error as follows:

Could not convert [1, 2, 3] to numeric.

Not sure why this happens and how to fix it. Can someone please help? thanks

You bave a list, use df['a'].apply(np.mean)

Erfan
– Erfan

2020-06-07 14:55:42 +00:00
Commented Jun 7, 2020 at 14:55 — Erfan
– Erfan, Commented Jun 7, 2020 at 14:55

BENY · Accepted Answer · 2020-06-07 14:55:08Z

3

Since your cell value type is list we need apply

df.a.apply(np.mean)
0    2.0
Name: a, dtype: float64

answered Jun 7, 2020 at 14:55

BENY

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1 Comment

Chipmunk_da Over a year ago

Thanks! And how can I convert and store it as a list i.e. [1,2,3]. list(df['a']) seems to add extra [] whereas just assigning it to a list with mylist = df['a'] converts mylist to a series.

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