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I have a pandas dataframe that contains the iris dataset. I want to subset this dataframe to only include sepal_length and species, and then reshape it so that the columns are the unique values for species and the values are the values for that species.

# load data into a dataframe
df = pd.read_csv('https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mwaskom/seaborn-data/master/iris.csv')

head(df)
+----+---------------+--------------+---------------+--------------+---------+
| | sepal_length | sepal_width | petal_length | petal_width | species |
+----+---------------+--------------+---------------+--------------+---------+
| 0 | 5.1 | 3.5 | 1.4 | 0.2 | setosa |
| 1 | 4.9 | 3.0 | 1.4 | 0.2 | setosa |
| 2 | 4.7 | 3.2 | 1.3 | 0.2 | setosa |
| 3 | 4.6 | 3.1 | 1.5 | 0.2 | setosa |
| 4 | 5.0 | 3.6 | 1.4 | 0.2 | setosa |
+----+---------------+--------------+---------------+--------------+---------+

I can do this is I take the data out of Pandas as use a dictionary to reshape the data, but I can't figure out how to do it within pandas.

data = df.to_dict('records')

e = 
for line in data:
 e[line['species']] = 

for line in data:
 e[line['species']].append(line['sepal_length'])

new = pd.DataFrame(e)

This is what I want to end up with:

+----+---------+-------------+-----------+
| | setosa | versicolor | virginica |
+----+---------+-------------+-----------+
| 0 | 5.1 | 7.0 | 6.3 |
| 1 | 4.9 | 6.4 | 5.8 |
| 2 | 4.7 | 6.9 | 7.1 |
| 3 | 4.6 | 5.5 | 6.3 |
| 4 | 5.0 | 6.5 | 6.5 |
+----+---------+-------------+-----------+

I've tried using pd.crosstab(df['sepal_length'], df['species']) but that doesn't get me what I want. I've also tried using df.pivot_table('sepal_length', columns='species') and that also isn't it.

What am I missing here?

IIUC you can use grouby.cumcount on species col and set index, then use pivot instead of pivot_table which does not requires an agg func.

df1 = df.set_index(df.groupby('species').cumcount())

df1 = df1.pivot(columns='species', values='sepal_length').rename_axis(None,axis=1)

print (df1)

 setosa versicolor virginica
0 5.1 7.0 6.3
1 4.9 6.4 5.8
2 4.7 6.9 7.1
3 4.6 5.5 6.3
4 5.0 6.5 6.5

What you're trying to do will take a few steps. (The code below assumes use of the standard "Iris dataset").

1. 
   

   First, let's subset your DataFrame by only the columns we need.

   
   
   

   df_subset = df[['sepal_length','species']]
   

   
   


2. 
   

   Next, use pandas.pivot (intead of pandas.pivot_table) to convert your DataFrame from "long" to "flat".

   
   
   

   df_pivot = df_subset.pivot(columns='species',values='sepal_length')
   

   
   


3. 
   

   Now, we're close to what you wanted but because your three species columns run along the same index, the pivoted DataFrame returns NaNs for two of the three columns for any given row. We can work around this by column-wise concatenating the DataFrame while re-indexing it. (Essentially creating three DataFrames - one for each species - and joining them along a new index). We can do this one of two ways:

   
   
   
   • 
     

     The compact solution:

     
     
     

     names = ['setosa','versicolor','virginica']
     
     df_final = pd.concat(map(lambda name: df_pivot[name].dropna().reset_index().drop('index',axis=1), names), axis=1) 
     

     
     
   
   
   • 
     

     Which is equivalent to:

     
     
     

     df_final = pd.concat([
      df_pivot['setosa'].dropna().reset_index().drop('index',axis=1),
      df_pivot['versicolor'].dropna().reset_index().drop('index',axis=1),
      df_pivot['virginica'].dropna().reset_index().drop('index',axis=1)],axis=1)