Pandas Tutorial for Beginners: Missing Value Handling from Entry to Practice

This article introduces methods for handling missing values in data analysis. Missing values refer to non-valid values in a dataset, represented as `NaN` in pandas. Before processing, it is necessary to first check: `isnull()` to mark missing values, `isnull().sum()` to count the number of missing values in each column, and `info()` to view the overall distribution of missing values. Processing strategies are divided into deletion and imputation: Deletion uses `dropna()`, which deletes records containing missing values by row (default) or by column; Imputation uses `fillna()`, including fixed values (e.g., 0), statistical measures (mean/median for numerical values, mode for categorical values), and forward/backward filling (`ffill/bfill`, suitable for time series). Taking e-commerce order data as an example, the case first checks for missing values, then uses the mean to impute the "amount" column and the mode to impute the "payment method" column. The core steps of processing are: check for missing values → select a strategy (delete for extremely few values, impute for many values or key data) → verify the result. It is necessary to flexibly choose methods based on the characteristics of the data.