title: Construct Pandas DataFrame from dictionary in form {index: list of row values}
body: <p>I've managed to do this using:</p>
  
  <pre><code>dft = pd.DataFrame.from_dict({
                      0: [50, 45, 00, 00], 
                      1: [53, 48, 00, 00],
                      2: [56, 53, 00, 00],
                      3: [54, 49, 00, 00],
                      4: [53, 48, 00, 00],
                      5: [50, 45, 00, 00]
                      }, orient='index'
                      )
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Done like this, the constructor looks just like the DataFrame making it easy to read/edit: </p>
  
  <pre><code>&gt;&gt;&gt; dft
      0   1   2   3
  0   50  45  0   0
  1   53  48  0   0
  2   56  53  0   0
  3   54  49  0   0
  4   53  48  0   0
  5   50  45  0   0
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>But the <a href="http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/dev/generated/pandas.DataFrame.from_dict.html#pandas.DataFrame.from_dict" rel="nofollow noreferrer">DataFrame.from_dict constructor</a> doesn't have a columns parameter, so giving the columns sensible names takes an additional step:</p>
  
  <pre><code>dft.columns = ['A', 'B', 'C', 'D']
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This seems clunky for such a handy (e.g. for unit tests) way to initialise DataFrames.</p>
  
  <p>So I wonder: is there a better way? </p>