Pandas conditional creation of a series/dataframe column

List comprehension is another way to create another column conditionally. If you are working with object dtypes in columns, like in your example, list comprehensions typically outperform most other methods.

Example list comprehension:

df['color'] = ['red' if x == 'Z' else 'green' for x in df['Set']]

%timeit tests:

import pandas as pd
import numpy as np

df = pd.DataFrame({'Type':list('ABBC'), 'Set':list('ZZXY')})
%timeit df['color'] = ['red' if x == 'Z' else 'green' for x in df['Set']]
%timeit df['color'] = np.where(df['Set']=='Z', 'green', 'red')
%timeit df['color'] = df.Set.map( lambda x: 'red' if x == 'Z' else 'green')

1000 loops, best of 3: 239 µs per loop
1000 loops, best of 3: 523 µs per loop
1000 loops, best of 3: 263 µs per loop

If you only have two choices to select from:

df['color'] = np.where(df['Set']=='Z', 'green', 'red')

For example,

import pandas as pd
import numpy as np

df = pd.DataFrame({'Type':list('ABBC'), 'Set':list('ZZXY')})
df['color'] = np.where(df['Set']=='Z', 'green', 'red')
print(df)

yields

  Set Type  color
0   Z    A  green
1   Z    B  green
2   X    B    red
3   Y    C    red

---

If you have more than two conditions then use np.select. For example, if you want color to be

• yellow when (df['Set'] == 'Z') & (df['Type'] == 'A')
• otherwise blue when (df['Set'] == 'Z') & (df['Type'] == 'B')
• otherwise purple when (df['Type'] == 'B')
• otherwise black,

then use

df = pd.DataFrame({'Type':list('ABBC'), 'Set':list('ZZXY')})
conditions = [
    (df['Set'] == 'Z') & (df['Type'] == 'A'),
    (df['Set'] == 'Z') & (df['Type'] == 'B'),
    (df['Type'] == 'B')]
choices = ['yellow', 'blue', 'purple']
df['color'] = np.select(conditions, choices, default='black')
print(df)

which yields

  Set Type   color
0   Z    A  yellow
1   Z    B    blue
2   X    B  purple
3   Y    C   black

Another way in which this could be achieved is

df['color'] = df.Set.map( lambda x: 'red' if x == 'Z' else 'green')

The following is slower than the approaches timed here, but we can compute the extra column based on the contents of more than one column, and more than two values can be computed for the extra column.

Simple example using just the "Set" column:

def set_color(row):
    if row["Set"] == "Z":
        return "red"
    else:
        return "green"

df = df.assign(color=df.apply(set_color, axis=1))

print(df)

  Set Type  color
0   Z    A    red
1   Z    B    red
2   X    B  green
3   Y    C  green

Example with more colours and more columns taken into account:

def set_color(row):
    if row["Set"] == "Z":
        return "red"
    elif row["Type"] == "C":
        return "blue"
    else:
        return "green"

df = df.assign(color=df.apply(set_color, axis=1))

print(df)

  Set Type  color
0   Z    A    red
1   Z    B    red
2   X    B  green
3   Y    C   blue

Edit (21/06/2019): Using plydata

It is also possible to use plydata to do this kind of things (this seems even slower than using assign and apply, though).

from plydata import define, if_else

Simple if_else:

df = define(df, color=if_else('Set=="Z"', '"red"', '"green"'))

print(df)

  Set Type  color
0   Z    A    red
1   Z    B    red
2   X    B  green
3   Y    C  green

Nested if_else:

df = define(df, color=if_else(
    'Set=="Z"',
    '"red"',
    if_else('Type=="C"', '"green"', '"blue"')))

print(df)                            

  Set Type  color
0   Z    A    red
1   Z    B    red
2   X    B   blue
3   Y    C  green