How to Calculate Quantiles by Group in Pandas

You can use the following basic syntax to calculate quantiles by group in Pandas:

df.groupby('grouping_variable').quantile(.5)

The following examples show how to use this syntax in practice.

Example 1: Calculate Quantile by Group

Suppose we have the following pandas DataFrame:

import pandas as pd

#create DataFrame 
df = pd.DataFrame({'team': [1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2],
                   'score': [3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 8, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 5]})

#view first five rows
df.head()

team	score
0	1	3
1	1	4
2	1	4
3	1	5
4	1	5 

The following code shows how to calculate the 90th percentile of values in the ‘points’ column, grouped by the ‘team’ column:

df.groupby('team').quantile(.90)

	score
team	
1	6.5
2	4.0

Here’s how to interpret the output:

• The 90th percentile of ‘points’ for team 1 is 6.5.
• The 90th percentile of ‘points’ for team 2 is 4.0.

Example 2: Calculate Several Quantiles by Group

The following code shows how to calculate several quantiles at once by group:

import pandas as pd

#create DataFrame
df = pd.DataFrame({'team': [1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2],
                   'score': [3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 8, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 5]})

#create functions to calculate 1st and 3rd quartiles
def q1(x):
    return x.quantile(0.25)

def q3(x):
    return x.quantile(0.75)

#calculate 1st and 3rd quartiles by group
vals = {'score': [q1, q3]}

df.groupby('team').agg(vals)

	score
        q1	q3
team		
1	4.0	5.0
2	2.0	3.0

Here’s how to interpret the output:

• The first and third quartile of scores for team 1 is 4.0 and 5.0, respectively.
• The first and third quartile of scores for team 2 is 2.0 and 3.0, respectively.

Additional Resources

The following tutorials explain how to perform other common functions in pandas:

How to Find the Max Value by Group in Pandas
How to Count Observations by Group in Pandas
How to Calculate the Mean of Columns in Pandas