Sum of Every Two Columns in Pandas dataframe

Question

When I am using Pandas, I have a problem. My task is like this:

df=pd.DataFrame([(1,2,3,4,5,6),(1,2,3,4,5,6),(1,2,3,4,5,6)],columns=['a','b','c','d','e','f'])
Out:
    a b c d e f
0   1 2 3 4 5 6
1   1 2 3 4 5 6 
2   1 2 3 4 5 6

what I want to do is the output dataframe looks like this:

Out:
    s1   s2   s3
0   3    7    11
1   3    7    11
2   3    7    11

That is to say, sum the column (a,b),(c,d),(e,f) separately and rename the result columns names as (s1,s2,s3). Could anyone help solve this problem in Pandas? Thank you so much.

Answer 1

1) Perform groupby wrt columns by supplying axis=1 . Per @Boud's comment, you exactly get what you want with a minor tweak in the grouping array:

df.groupby((np.arange(len(df.columns)) // 2) + 1, axis=1).sum().add_prefix('s')

Grouping gets performed according to this condition:

np.arange(len(df.columns)) // 2
# array([0, 0, 1, 1, 2, 2], dtype=int32)

---

2) Use np.add.reduceat which is a faster alternative:

df = pd.DataFrame(np.add.reduceat(df.values, np.arange(len(df.columns))[::2], axis=1))
df.columns = df.columns + 1
df.add_prefix('s')

Timing Constraints:

For a DF of 1 million rows spanned over 20 columns:

from string import ascii_lowercase
np.random.seed(42)
df = pd.DataFrame(np.random.randint(0, 10, (10**6,20)), columns=list(ascii_lowercase[:20]))
df.shape
(1000000, 20)

def with_groupby(df):
    return df.groupby((np.arange(len(df.columns)) // 2) + 1, axis=1).sum().add_prefix('s')

def with_reduceat(df):
    df = pd.DataFrame(np.add.reduceat(df.values, np.arange(len(df.columns))[::2], axis=1))
    df.columns = df.columns + 1
    return df.add_prefix('s')

# test whether they give the same o/p
with_groupby(df).equals(with_groupby(df))
True

%timeit with_groupby(df.copy())
1 loop, best of 3: 1.11 s per loop

%timeit with_reduceat(df.copy())   # <--- (>3X faster)
1 loop, best of 3: 345 ms per loop