What is the most efficient way to create a dictionary of two pandas Dataframe columns?

In [9]: pd.Series(df.Letter.values,index=df.Position).to_dict()
Out[9]: {1: 'a', 2: 'b', 3: 'c', 4: 'd', 5: 'e'}

Speed comparion (using Wouter's method)

In [6]: df = pd.DataFrame(randint(0,10,10000).reshape(5000,2),columns=list('AB'))

In [7]: %timeit dict(zip(df.A,df.B))
1000 loops, best of 3: 1.27 ms per loop

In [8]: %timeit pd.Series(df.A.values,index=df.B).to_dict()
1000 loops, best of 3: 987 us per loop

I found a faster way to solve the problem, at least on realistically large datasets using: df.set_index(KEY).to_dict()[VALUE]

Proof on 50,000 rows:

df = pd.DataFrame(np.random.randint(32, 120, 100000).reshape(50000,2),columns=list('AB'))
df['A'] = df['A'].apply(chr)

%timeit dict(zip(df.A,df.B))
%timeit pd.Series(df.A.values,index=df.B).to_dict()
%timeit df.set_index('A').to_dict()['B']

Output:

100 loops, best of 3: 7.04 ms per loop  # WouterOvermeire
100 loops, best of 3: 9.83 ms per loop  # Jeff
100 loops, best of 3: 4.28 ms per loop  # Kikohs (me)

In Python 3.6 the fastest way is still the WouterOvermeire one. Kikohs' proposal is slower than the other two options.

import timeit

setup = '''
import pandas as pd
import numpy as np
df = pd.DataFrame(np.random.randint(32, 120, 100000).reshape(50000,2),columns=list('AB'))
df['A'] = df['A'].apply(chr)
'''

timeit.Timer('dict(zip(df.A,df.B))', setup=setup).repeat(7,500)
timeit.Timer('pd.Series(df.A.values,index=df.B).to_dict()', setup=setup).repeat(7,500)
timeit.Timer('df.set_index("A").to_dict()["B"]', setup=setup).repeat(7,500)

Results:

1.1214002349999777 s  # WouterOvermeire
1.1922008498571748 s  # Jeff
1.7034366211428602 s  # Kikohs