is from dict of equal-length lists or numpy arrays data {'state'['ohio''ohio''ohio''nevada''nevada']'year'[ ]'pop'[ ]frame dataframe(datathe resulting dataframe will have its index assigned automatically as with seriesand the columns are placed in sorted orderin [ ]frame out[ ]pop state ohio ohio ohio nevada nevada year if you specify sequence of columnsthe dataframe' columns will be exactly what you passin [ ]dataframe(datacolumns=['year''state''pop']out[ ]year state pop ohio ohio ohio nevada nevada as with seriesif you pass column that isn' contained in datait will appear with na values in the resultin [ ]frame dataframe(datacolumns=['year''state''pop''debt']index=['one''two''three''four''five']in [ ]frame out[ ]year state one ohio two ohio three ohio four nevada five nevada pop debt nan nan nan nan nan in [ ]frame columns out[ ]index([yearstatepopdebt]dtype=objecta column in dataframe can be retrieved as series either by dict-like notation or by attributein [ ]frame ['state'out[ ]one ohio in [ ]frame year out[ ]one getting started with pandas www it-ebooks info