title: What is the equivalent to a Matlab cell array?
body: <p>I am new to Python and trying to create something equivalent to Matlab's "cell array". Lets say I have 100 customers index 'C001', 'C002' etc. and I have different data for each customer:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Size of premises in square meters [real number]</li>
  <li>categorical data showing whether they are 'commercial', 'residential' or 'other'</li>
  <li>hourly time series of their electricity consumption in 2014 i.e. datetime-indexed array of 8760 real values</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>What is the best way to buildsuch a dataset in Python 2.7 that combines single values, categorical data and time-index arrays? I am trying to use pandas for this but no success so far.</p>
  
  <p>Thank you very much in advance</p>