title: How to get the longest length string/integer/float from a pandas column when there are strings in the column
body: <p>I have a dataframe with many columns of data and different types. I have encountered one column that has String and Integers contained within it. I am trying to find the values with the longest/shortest length (note not largest value). (NOTE: The eg I am using below only has integers in it because I couldn't work out how to mix dtypes and still call this an int64 column)</p>
  
  
  
  <pre><code>    Name    MixedField
  a   david   32252
  b   andrew  4023
  c   calvin  25
  d   david   2
  e   calvin  522
  f   david   35
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The method I am using is to convert the df column to a String Series (because they might be double/int/string/combinations), and then I can get the max/min length items from this series:</p>
  
  <pre><code>df['MixedField'].apply(str).map(len).max()
  df['MixedField'].apply(str).map(len).min()
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>But can't work out how to select the actual values that are the maximum and minimum length!?! (ie 32252 (longest) and 2 (shortest)</p>
  
  <p>(I possibly don't need to explain this, but there is a subtle difference between largest and longest...(ie "aa" is longer than "z")). Appreciate your help. Thanks.</p>