How to remove NaN from a Pandas Series? (2024)

In the pandas series constructor, the method called dropna() is used to remove missing values from a series object. And it does not update the original series object with removed NaN values instead of updating the original series object, it will return another series object with updated values.

The parameters of the dropna() method are axis, inplace, and how.

Example 1

# importing packagesimport pandas as pdimport numpy as np# Creating Series objectssr = pd.Series([42, np.nan, 55, 42, np.nan, 73, np.nan, 55, 76, 87], index=list("ABCDEFGHIJ"))print('Series object:',sr)# Remove missing elementsresult = sr.dropna()# display outputprint(result)

Explanation

Initially, we have created a pandas Series with labeled index values and there are some Nan values present in the series object. After creating a pandas series object we have applied the dropna() method to remove missing values.

Output

Series object:A 42.0B NaNC 55.0D 42.0E NaNF 73.0G NaNH 55.0I 76.0J 87.0dtype: float64A 42.0C 55.0D 42.0F 73.0H 55.0I 76.0J 87.0dtype: float64

In the above output block, we can see both initial and resultant series objects. The second series object is the output object with removed missing values.

Example 2

# importing packagesimport pandas as pdimport numpy as npdates = pd.date_range('2021-06-01', periods=10, freq='D')#creating pandas Series with date indexsr = pd.Series([np.nan, 61, 72, 11, np.nan, 24, 56, 30, np.nan, 55], index=dates)print('Series object:',sr)# Remove missing elementsresult = sr.dropna()# display outputprint(result)

Explanation

In the following example, we have created a pandas Series with date range index values and there are some Nan values present in the series object “sr”. After creating a pandas series object we applied the dropna() method to remove those Nan values.

Output

Series object:2021-06-01 NaN2021-06-02 61.02021-06-03 72.02021-06-04 11.02021-06-05 NaN2021-06-06 24.02021-06-07 56.02021-06-08 30.02021-06-09 NaN2021-06-10 55.0Freq: D, dtype: float642021-06-02 61.02021-06-03 72.02021-06-04 11.02021-06-06 24.02021-06-07 56.02021-06-08 30.02021-06-10 55.0dtype: float64

Here we got a new series object with removed Nan values. In the above output block, we can see both initial and resultant series objects. The first object is the initial series, and the second one is the output of the dropna() method.