[python] Use .corr to get the correlation between two columns

I have the following pandas dataframe Top15:

I create a column that estimates the number of citable documents per person:

Top15['PopEst'] = Top15['Energy Supply'] / Top15['Energy Supply per Capita']
Top15['Citable docs per Capita'] = Top15['Citable documents'] / Top15['PopEst']

I want to know the correlation between the number of citable documents per capita and the energy supply per capita. So I use the .corr() method (Pearson's correlation):

data = Top15[['Citable docs per Capita','Energy Supply per Capita']]
correlation = data.corr(method='pearson')

I want to return a single number, but the result is:

I ran into the same issue. It appeared Citable Documents per Person was a float, and python skips it somehow by default. All the other columns of my dataframe were in numpy-formats, so I solved it by converting the columnt to np.float64

Top15['Citable Documents per Person']=np.float64(Top15['Citable Documents per Person'])

Remember it's exactly the column you calculated yourself

I solved this problem by changing the data type. If you see the 'Energy Supply per Capita' is a numerical type while the 'Citable docs per Capita' is an object type. I converted the column to float using astype. I had the same problem with some np functions: count_nonzero and sum worked while mean and std didn't.

My solution would be after converting data to numerical type:

Top15[['Citable docs per Capita','Energy Supply per Capita']].corr()

When you call this:

data = Top15[['Citable docs per Capita','Energy Supply per Capita']]
correlation = data.corr(method='pearson')

Since, DataFrame.corr() function performs pair-wise correlations, you have four pair from two variables. So, basically you are getting diagonal values as auto correlation (correlation with itself, two values since you have two variables), and other two values as cross correlations of one vs another and vice versa.

Either perform correlation between two series to get a single value:

from scipy.stats.stats import pearsonr
docs_col = Top15['Citable docs per Capita'].values
energy_col = Top15['Energy Supply per Capita'].values
corr , _ = pearsonr(docs_col, energy_col)

or, if you want a single value from the same function (DataFrame's corr):

single_value = correlation[0][1] 

Hope this helps.

changing 'Citable docs per Capita' to numeric before correlation will solve the problem.

    Top15['Citable docs per Capita'] = pd.to_numeric(Top15['Citable docs per Capita'])
    data = Top15[['Citable docs per Capita','Energy Supply per Capita']]
    correlation = data.corr(method='pearson')

If you want the correlations between all pairs of columns, you could do something like this:

import pandas as pd
import numpy as np

def get_corrs(df):
    col_correlations = df.corr()
    col_correlations.loc[:, :] = np.tril(col_correlations, k=-1)
    cor_pairs = col_correlations.stack()
    return cor_pairs.to_dict()

my_corrs = get_corrs(df)
# and the following line to retrieve the single correlation
print(my_corrs[('Citable docs per Capita','Energy Supply per Capita')])

It works like this:

Top15['Citable docs per Capita']=np.float64(Top15['Citable docs per Capita'])

Top15['Energy Supply per Capita']=np.float64(Top15['Energy Supply per Capita'])

Top15['Energy Supply per Capita'].corr(Top15['Citable docs per Capita'])