shuffling/permutating a DataFrame in pandas

What's a simple and efficient way to shuffle a dataframe in pandas, by rows or by columns? I.e. how to write a function shuffle(df, n, axis=0) that takes a dataframe, a number of shuffles n, and an axis (axis=0 is rows, axis=1 is columns) and returns a copy of the dataframe that has been shuffled n times.

Edit: key is to do this without destroying the row/column labels of the dataframe. If you just shuffle df.index that loses all that information. I want the resulting df to be the same as the original except with the order of rows or order of columns different.

Edit2: My question was unclear. When I say shuffle the rows, I mean shuffle each row independently. So if you have two columns a and b, I want each row shuffled on its own, so that you don't have the same associations between a and b as you do if you just re-order each row as a whole. Something like:

for 1...n:
  for each col in df: shuffle column
return new_df

But hopefully more efficient than naive looping. This does not work for me:

def shuffle(df, n, axis=0):
        shuffled_df = df.copy()
        for k in range(n):
            shuffled_df.apply(np.random.shuffle(shuffled_df.values),axis=axis)
        return shuffled_df

df = pandas.DataFrame({'A':range(10), 'B':range(10)})
shuffle(df, 5)

Use numpy's random.permuation function:

In [1]: df = pd.DataFrame({'A':range(10), 'B':range(10)})

In [2]: df
Out[2]:
   A  B
0  0  0
1  1  1
2  2  2
3  3  3
4  4  4
5  5  5
6  6  6
7  7  7
8  8  8
9  9  9


In [3]: df.reindex(np.random.permutation(df.index))
Out[3]:
   A  B
0  0  0
5  5  5
6  6  6
3  3  3
8  8  8
7  7  7
9  9  9
1  1  1
2  2  2
4  4  4

Sampling randomizes, so just sample the entire data frame.

df.sample(frac=1)

As @Corey Levinson notes, you have to be careful when you reassign:

df['column'] = df['column'].sample(frac=1).reset_index(drop=True)

In [16]: def shuffle(df, n=1, axis=0):     
    ...:     df = df.copy()
    ...:     for _ in range(n):
    ...:         df.apply(np.random.shuffle, axis=axis)
    ...:     return df
    ...:     

In [17]: df = pd.DataFrame({'A':range(10), 'B':range(10)})

In [18]: shuffle(df)

In [19]: df
Out[19]: 
   A  B
0  8  5
1  1  7
2  7  3
3  6  2
4  3  4
5  0  1
6  9  0
7  4  6
8  2  8
9  5  9

You can use sklearn.utils.shuffle() (requires sklearn 0.16.1 or higher to support Pandas data frames):

# Generate data
import pandas as pd
df = pd.DataFrame({'A':range(5), 'B':range(5)})
print('df: {0}'.format(df))

# Shuffle Pandas data frame
import sklearn.utils
df = sklearn.utils.shuffle(df)
print('\n\ndf: {0}'.format(df))

outputs:

df:    A  B
0  0  0
1  1  1
2  2  2
3  3  3
4  4  4


df:    A  B
1  1  1
0  0  0
3  3  3
4  4  4
2  2  2

Then you can use df.reset_index() to reset the index column, if needs to be:

df = df.reset_index(drop=True)
print('\n\ndf: {0}'.format(df)

outputs:

df:    A  B
0  1  1
1  0  0
2  4  4
3  2  2
4  3  3

A simple solution in pandas is to use the sample method independently on each column. Use apply to iterate over each column:

df = pd.DataFrame({'a':[1,2,3,4,5,6], 'b':[1,2,3,4,5,6]})
df

   a  b
0  1  1
1  2  2
2  3  3
3  4  4
4  5  5
5  6  6

df.apply(lambda x: x.sample(frac=1).values)

   a  b
0  4  2
1  1  6
2  6  5
3  5  3
4  2  4
5  3  1

You must use .value so that you return a numpy array and not a Series, or else the returned Series will align to the original DataFrame not changing a thing:

df.apply(lambda x: x.sample(frac=1))

   a  b
0  1  1
1  2  2
2  3  3
3  4  4
4  5  5
5  6  6

shuffling/permutating a DataFrame in pandas

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