How to determine whether a column/variable is numeric or not in Pandas/NumPy?

In pandas 0.20.2 you can do:

import pandas as pd
from pandas.api.types import is_string_dtype
from pandas.api.types import is_numeric_dtype

df = pd.DataFrame({'A': ['a', 'b', 'c'], 'B': [1.0, 2.0, 3.0]})

is_string_dtype(df['A'])
>>>> True

is_numeric_dtype(df['B'])
>>>> True

You can use np.issubdtype to check if the dtype is a sub dtype of np.number. Examples:

np.issubdtype(arr.dtype, np.number)  # where arr is a numpy array
np.issubdtype(df['X'].dtype, np.number)  # where df['X'] is a pandas Series

This works for numpy's dtypes but fails for pandas specific types like pd.Categorical as Thomas noted. If you are using categoricals is_numeric_dtype function from pandas is a better alternative than np.issubdtype.

df = pd.DataFrame({'A': [1, 2, 3], 'B': [1.0, 2.0, 3.0], 
                   'C': [1j, 2j, 3j], 'D': ['a', 'b', 'c']})
df
Out: 
   A    B   C  D
0  1  1.0  1j  a
1  2  2.0  2j  b
2  3  3.0  3j  c

df.dtypes
Out: 
A         int64
B       float64
C    complex128
D        object
dtype: object

np.issubdtype(df['A'].dtype, np.number)
Out: True

np.issubdtype(df['B'].dtype, np.number)
Out: True

np.issubdtype(df['C'].dtype, np.number)
Out: True

np.issubdtype(df['D'].dtype, np.number)
Out: False

For multiple columns you can use np.vectorize:

is_number = np.vectorize(lambda x: np.issubdtype(x, np.number))
is_number(df.dtypes)
Out: array([ True,  True,  True, False], dtype=bool)

And for selection, pandas now has select_dtypes:

df.select_dtypes(include=[np.number])
Out: 
   A    B   C
0  1  1.0  1j
1  2  2.0  2j
2  3  3.0  3j

Based on @jaime's answer in the comments, you need to check .dtype.kind for the column of interest. For example;

>>> import pandas as pd
>>> df = pd.DataFrame({'numeric': [1, 2, 3], 'not_numeric': ['A', 'B', 'C']})
>>> df['numeric'].dtype.kind in 'biufc'
>>> True
>>> df['not_numeric'].dtype.kind in 'biufc'
>>> False

NB The meaning of biufc: b bool, i int (signed), u unsigned int, f float, c complex. See https://docs.scipy.org/doc/numpy/reference/generated/numpy.dtype.kind.html#numpy.dtype.kind

Pandas has select_dtype function. You can easily filter your columns on int64, and float64 like this:

df.select_dtypes(include=['int64','float64'])

This is a pseudo-internal method to return only the numeric type data

In [27]: df = DataFrame(dict(A = np.arange(3), 
                             B = np.random.randn(3), 
                             C = ['foo','bar','bah'], 
                             D = Timestamp('20130101')))

In [28]: df
Out[28]: 
   A         B    C                   D
0  0 -0.667672  foo 2013-01-01 00:00:00
1  1  0.811300  bar 2013-01-01 00:00:00
2  2  2.020402  bah 2013-01-01 00:00:00

In [29]: df.dtypes
Out[29]: 
A             int64
B           float64
C            object
D    datetime64[ns]
dtype: object

In [30]: df._get_numeric_data()
Out[30]: 
   A         B
0  0 -0.667672
1  1  0.811300
2  2  2.020402