How to use a dict to subset a DataFrame?

I would use .query() method for this task:

qry = ' and '.join(["{} == '{}'".format(k,v) for k,v in tmp.items()])    

data.query(qry)

output:

   age risk     sex smoking
7   24   no  female     yes
22  43   no  female     yes
23  42   no  female     yes
25  24   no  female     yes
32  29   no  female     yes
40  34   no  female     yes
43  35   no  female     yes

Query string:

print(qry)
"sex == 'female' and risk == 'no' and smoking == 'yes'"

You can create a look up data frame from the dictionary and then do an inner join with the data which will have the same effect as query:

from pandas import merge, DataFrame
merge(DataFrame(tmp, index =[0]), data)

You can use list comprehension with concat and all:

import numpy as np
import pandas as pd

np.random.seed(123)
x = pd.Series(np.random.randint(0,2,10), dtype='category')
x.cat.categories = ['no', 'yes']
y = pd.Series(np.random.randint(0,2,10), dtype='category')
y.cat.categories = ['no', 'yes']
z = pd.Series(np.random.randint(0,2,10), dtype='category')
z.cat.categories = ['male', 'female']

a = pd.Series(np.random.randint(20,60,10), dtype='category')

data = pd.DataFrame({'risk':x, 'smoking':y, 'sex':z, 'age':a})
print (data)
  age risk     sex smoking
0  24   no    male     yes
1  23  yes    male     yes
2  22   no  female      no
3  40   no  female     yes
4  59   no  female      no
5  22   no    male     yes
6  40   no  female      no
7  27  yes    male     yes
8  55  yes    male     yes
9  48   no    male      no

tmp = {'risk':'no', 'smoking':'yes', 'sex':'female'}
mask = pd.concat([data[x[0]].eq(x[1]) for x in tmp.items()], axis=1).all(axis=1)
print (mask)
0    False
1    False
2    False
3     True
4    False
5    False
6    False
7    False
8    False
9    False
dtype: bool

df1 = data[mask]
print (df1)
 age risk     sex smoking
3  40   no  female     yes

L = [(x[0], x[1]) for x in tmp.items()]
print (L)
[('smoking', 'yes'), ('sex', 'female'), ('risk', 'no')]

L = pd.concat([data[x[0]].eq(x[1]) for x in tmp.items()], axis=1)
print (L)
  smoking    sex   risk
0    True  False   True
1    True  False  False
2   False   True   True
3    True   True   True
4   False   True   True
5    True  False   True
6   False   True   True
7    True  False  False
8    True  False  False
9   False  False   True

Timings:

len(data)=1M.

N = 1000000
np.random.seed(123)
x = pd.Series(np.random.randint(0,2,N), dtype='category')
x.cat.categories = ['no', 'yes']
y = pd.Series(np.random.randint(0,2,N), dtype='category')
y.cat.categories = ['no', 'yes']
z = pd.Series(np.random.randint(0,2,N), dtype='category')
z.cat.categories = ['male', 'female']

a = pd.Series(np.random.randint(20,60,N), dtype='category')

data = pd.DataFrame({'risk':x, 'smoking':y, 'sex':z, 'age':a})

#[1000000 rows x 4 columns]
print (data)


tmp = {'risk':'no', 'smoking':'yes', 'sex':'female'}


In [133]: %timeit (data[pd.concat([data[x[0]].eq(x[1]) for x in tmp.items()], axis=1).all(axis=1)])
10 loops, best of 3: 89.1 ms per loop

In [134]: %timeit (data.query(' and '.join(["{} == '{}'".format(k,v) for k,v in tmp.items()])))
1 loop, best of 3: 237 ms per loop

In [135]: %timeit (pd.merge(pd.DataFrame(tmp, index =[0]), data.reset_index()).set_index('index'))
1 loop, best of 3: 256 ms per loop