change specific column object to int64 column code example

Example 1: pandas change to numeric

>>> s = pd.Series(["8", 6, "7.5", 3, "0.9"]) # mixed string and numeric values
>>> s
0      8
1      6
2    7.5
3      3
4    0.9
dtype: object

>>> pd.to_numeric(s) # convert everything to float values
0    8.0
1    6.0
2    7.5
3    3.0
4    0.9
dtype: float64

Example 2: astype float across columns pandas

In [273]: cols = df.columns.drop('id')

In [274]: df[cols] = df[cols].apply(pd.to_numeric, errors='coerce')

In [275]: df
Out[275]:
     id    a  b  c  d  e    f
0  id_3  NaN  6  3  5  8  1.0
1  id_9  3.0  7  5  7  3  NaN
2  id_7  4.0  2  3  5  4  2.0
3  id_0  7.0  3  5  7  9  4.0
4  id_0  2.0  4  6  4  0  2.0

In [276]: df.dtypes
Out[276]:
id     object
a     float64
b       int64
c       int64
d       int64
e       int64
f     float64
dtype: object