Pandas is a widely-used Python library built on top of NumPy. Much of the rest of this course will be dedicated to learning about pandas and how it is used in the world of finance.

What is Pandas?

Pandas is a Python library created by Wes McKinney, who built pandas to help work with datasets in Python for his work in finance at his place of employment.

According to the library’s website, pandas is “a fast, powerful, flexible and easy to use open source data analysis and manipulation tool, built on top of the Python programming language.”

Pandas stands for ‘panel data’. Note that pandas is typically stylized as an all-lowercase word, although it is considered a best practice to capitalize its first letter at the beginning of sentences.

Pandas is an open source library, which means that anyone can view its source code and make suggestions using pull requests. If you are curious about this, visit the pandas source code repository on GitHub