Python equivalent of R's head and tail function
Question: I want to preview a Pandas dataframe. I would use head(mymatrix) in R, but I
do not know how to do this in Pandas Python.

When I type

df.head(10) I get...

    
    
    <class 'pandas.core.frame.DataFrame'>
    Int64Index: 10 entries, 0 to 9
    Data columns (total 14 columns):
    #Book_Date            10  non-null values
    Item_Qty              10  non-null values
    Item_id               10  non-null values
    Location_id           10  non-null values
    MFG_Discount          10  non-null values
    Sale_Revenue          10  non-null values
    Sales_Flg             10  non-null values
    Sell_Unit_Cost        5  non-null values
    Store_Discount        10  non-null values
    Transaction_Id        10  non-null values
    Unit_Cost_Amt         10  non-null values
    Unit_Received_Cost    5  non-null values
    Unnamed: 0            10  non-null values
    Weight                10  non-null values
    


Answer: Suppose you want to output the first and last 10 rows of the iris data set.

In R:

    
    
    data(iris)
    head(iris, 10)
    tail(iris, 10)
    

In Python (scikit-learn required to load the iris data set):

    
    
    import pandas as pd
    from sklearn import datasets
    iris = pd.DataFrame(datasets.load_iris().data)
    iris.head(10)
    iris.tail(10)
    

Now, as [previously answered](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13085709/df-
head-sometimes-doesnt-work-in-pandas-python), if your data frame is too large
for the display you use in the terminal, a summary is output. To visualize
your data in a terminal, you could either expend the terminal or reduce the
number of columns to display, as follows.

    
    
    iris.ix[:,1:2].head(10)
    

