Error when trying to multiply a variable?

Question

I'm trying to multiply a variable to output a weighted value as follows:

import numpy as np
import pandas as pd

data_2017_18.income1_weight = data_2017_18.income1 * data_2017_18.survey_weight

I'm receiving the following error message:

TypeError: Object with dtype category cannot perform the numpy op multiply

I've tried to change the data_2017_18.income1 to an integer as follows:

int(data_2017_18.income1)

But I'm getting this error:

TypeError: cannot convert the series to <class 'int'>

Any suggestions, please?

Many thanks

Answer 1

Try Series.astype :

data_2017_18.income1_weight = data_2017_18.income1.astype(float) * data_2017_18.survey_weight