Numpy reshape 1d to 2d array with 1 column

To avoid the need to reshape in the first place, if you slice a row / column with a list, or a "running" slice, you will get a 2D array with one row / column

import numpy as np
x = np.array(np.random.normal(size=(4,4)))
print x, '\n'

Result:
[[ 0.01360395  1.12130368  0.95429414  0.56827029]
 [-0.66592215  1.04852182  0.20588886  0.37623406]
 [ 0.9440652   0.69157556  0.8252977  -0.53993904]
 [ 0.6437994   0.32704783  0.52523173  0.8320762 ]] 

y = x[:,[0]]
print y, 'col vector \n'
Result:
[[ 0.01360395]
 [-0.66592215]
 [ 0.9440652 ]
 [ 0.6437994 ]] col vector 


y = x[[0],:]
print y, 'row vector \n'

Result:
[[ 0.01360395  1.12130368  0.95429414  0.56827029]] row vector 

# Slice with "running" index on a column
y = x[:,0:1]
print y, '\n'

Result:
[[ 0.01360395]
 [-0.66592215]
 [ 0.9440652 ]
 [ 0.6437994 ]] 

Instead if you use a single number for choosing the row/column, it will result in a 1D array, which is the root cause of your issue:

y = x[:,0]
print y, '\n'

Result:
[ 0.01360395 -0.66592215  0.9440652   0.6437994 ] 

You could do -

ar.reshape(ar.shape[0],-1)

That second input to reshape : -1 takes care of the number of elements for the second axis. Thus, for a 2D input case, it does no change. For a 1D input case, it creates a 2D array with all elements being "pushed" to the first axis because of ar.shape[0], which was the total number of elements.

Sample runs

1D Case :

In [87]: ar
Out[87]: array([ 0.80203158,  0.25762844,  0.67039516,  0.31021513,  0.80701097])

In [88]: ar.reshape(ar.shape[0],-1)
Out[88]: 
array([[ 0.80203158],
       [ 0.25762844],
       [ 0.67039516],
       [ 0.31021513],
       [ 0.80701097]])

2D Case :

In [82]: ar
Out[82]: 
array([[ 0.37684126,  0.16973899,  0.82157815,  0.38958523],
       [ 0.39728524,  0.03952238,  0.04153052,  0.82009233],
       [ 0.38748174,  0.51377738,  0.40365096,  0.74823535]])

In [83]: ar.reshape(ar.shape[0],-1)
Out[83]: 
array([[ 0.37684126,  0.16973899,  0.82157815,  0.38958523],
       [ 0.39728524,  0.03952238,  0.04153052,  0.82009233],
       [ 0.38748174,  0.51377738,  0.40365096,  0.74823535]])

A variant of the answer by divakar is: x = np.reshape(x, (len(x),-1)), which also deals with the case when the input is a 1d or 2d list.

The simplest way:

ar.reshape(-1, 1)