python - finding streaks in pandas dataframe

Question

I have a pandas dataframe as follows:

time    winner  loser   stat
1       A       B       0
2       C       B       0
3       D       B       1
4       E       B       0
5       F       A       0
6       G       A       0
7       H       A       0
8       I       A       1

each row is a match result. the first column is the time of the match, second and third column contain winner/loser and the fourth column is one stat from the match.

I want to detect streaks of zeros for this stat per loser.

The expected result should look like this:

time    winner  loser   stat    streak
1       A       B       0       1
2       C       B       0       2
3       D       B       1       0
4       E       B       0       1
5       F       A       0       1
6       G       A       0       2
7       H       A       0       3
8       I       A       1       0

In pseudocode the algorithm should work like this:

• .groupby loser column.
• then iterate over each row of each loser group
• in each row, look at the stat column: if it contains 0, then increment the streak value from the previous row by 0. if it is not 0, then start a new streak, that is, put 0 into the streak column.

So the .groupby is clear. But then I would need some sort of .apply where I can look at the previous row? this is where I am stuck.

Answer 1

You can apply custom function f, then cumsum, cumcount and astype:

def f(x):
    x['streak'] = x.groupby( (x['stat'] != 0).cumsum()).cumcount() + 
                  ( (x['stat'] != 0).cumsum() == 0).astype(int) 
    return x

df = df.groupby('loser', sort=False).apply(f)
print df
   time winner loser  stat  streak
0     1      A     B     0       1
1     2      C     B     0       2
2     3      D     B     1       0
3     4      E     B     0       1
4     5      F     A     0       1
5     6      G     A     0       2
6     7      H     A     0       3
7     8      I     A     1       0

For better undestanding:

def f(x):
    x['c'] = (x['stat'] != 0).cumsum()
    x['a'] = (x['c'] == 0).astype(int)
    x['b'] = x.groupby( 'c' ).cumcount()

    x['streak'] = x.groupby( 'c' ).cumcount() + x['a']

    return x
df = df.groupby('loser', sort=False).apply(f)
print df
   time winner loser  stat  c  a  b  streak
0     1      A     B     0  0  1  0       1
1     2      C     B     0  0  1  1       2
2     3      D     B     1  1  0  0       0
3     4      E     B     0  1  0  1       1
4     5      F     A     0  0  1  0       1
5     6      G     A     0  0  1  1       2
6     7      H     A     0  0  1  2       3
7     8      I     A     1  1  0  0       0