One error you may encounter when using pandas is:

KeyError: 'column_name'

This error occurs when you attempt to access some column in a pandas DataFrame that does not exist.

Typically this error occurs when you simply misspell a column names or include an accidental space before or after the column name.

The following example shows how to fix this error in practice.

How to Reproduce the Error

Suppose we create the following pandas DataFrame:

import pandas as pd

#create DataFrame
df = pd.DataFrame({'points': [25, 12, 15, 14, 19, 23, 25, 29],
                   'assists': [5, 7, 7, 9, 12, 9, 9, 4],
                   'rebounds': [11, 8, 10, 6, 6, 5, 9, 12]})

#view DataFrame
df

points	assists	rebounds
0	25	5	11
1	12	7	8
2	15	7	10
3	14	9	6
4	19	12	6
5	23	9	5
6	25	9	9
7	29	4	12

Then suppose we attempt to print the values in a column called ‘point’:

#attempt to print values in 'point' column
print(df['point'])

KeyError                                  Traceback (most recent call last)
/srv/conda/envs/notebook/lib/python3.7/site-packages/pandas/core/indexes/base.py in get_loc(self, key, method, tolerance)
   3360             try:
-> 3361                 return self._engine.get_loc(casted_key)
   3362             except KeyError as err:

/srv/conda/envs/notebook/lib/python3.7/site-packages/pandas/_libs/index.pyx in pandas._libs.index.IndexEngine.get_loc()

/srv/conda/envs/notebook/lib/python3.7/site-packages/pandas/_libs/index.pyx in pandas._libs.index.IndexEngine.get_loc()

pandas/_libs/hashtable_class_helper.pxi in pandas._libs.hashtable.PyObjectHashTable.get_item()

pandas/_libs/hashtable_class_helper.pxi in pandas._libs.hashtable.PyObjectHashTable.get_item()

KeyError: 'point'

Since there is no ‘point’ column in our DataFrame, we receive a KeyError.

How to Fix the Error

The way to fix this error is to simply make sure we spell the column name correctly. 

If we’re unsure of all of the column names in the DataFrame, we can use the following syntax to print each column name:

#display all column names of DataFrame
print(df.columns.tolist())

['points', 'assists', 'rebounds']

We can see that there is a column called ‘points’, so we can fix our error by spelling the column name correctly:

#print values in 'points' column
print(df['points'])

0    25
1    12
2    15
3    14
4    19
5    23
6    25
7    29
Name: points, dtype: int64

The following tutorials explain how to fix other common errors in Python: