pyspark.pandas.DataFrame.diff

DataFrame.diff(periods: int = 1, axis: Union[int, str] = 0) → pyspark.pandas.frame.DataFrame

First discrete difference of element.

Calculates the difference of a DataFrame element compared with another element in the DataFrame (default is the element in the same column of the previous row).

Note

the current implementation of diff uses Spark’s Window without specifying partition specification. This leads to move all data into single partition in single machine and could cause serious performance degradation. Avoid this method against very large dataset.

Parameters
periodsint, default 1

Periods to shift for calculating difference, accepts negative values.

axisint, default 0 or ‘index’

Can only be set to 0 at the moment.

Returns
diffedDataFrame

Examples

>>> df = ps.DataFrame({'a': [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6],
...                    'b': [1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8],
...                    'c': [1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36]}, columns=['a', 'b', 'c'])
>>> df
   a  b   c
0  1  1   1
1  2  1   4
2  3  2   9
3  4  3  16
4  5  5  25
5  6  8  36
>>> df.diff()
     a    b     c
0  NaN  NaN   NaN
1  1.0  0.0   3.0
2  1.0  1.0   5.0
3  1.0  1.0   7.0
4  1.0  2.0   9.0
5  1.0  3.0  11.0

Difference with previous column

>>> df.diff(periods=3)
     a    b     c
0  NaN  NaN   NaN
1  NaN  NaN   NaN
2  NaN  NaN   NaN
3  3.0  2.0  15.0
4  3.0  4.0  21.0
5  3.0  6.0  27.0

Difference with following row

>>> df.diff(periods=-1)
     a    b     c
0 -1.0  0.0  -3.0
1 -1.0 -1.0  -5.0
2 -1.0 -1.0  -7.0
3 -1.0 -2.0  -9.0
4 -1.0 -3.0 -11.0
5  NaN  NaN   NaN