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Exploratory Data Analysis Cheat Sheet

Exploratory Data Analysis Cheat Sheet

A systematic workflow for exploring a new dataset, covering summary statistics, distribution plots, correlation analysis, and visualization with pandas and seaborn.

1 PageBeginnerMar 15, 2026

First Look at the Data

Shape, types, and summary statistics.

python
import pandas as pddf = pd.read_csv("data.csv")df.shape                        # (rows, columns)df.info()                       # dtypes, non-null counts, memory usagedf.describe()                   # count, mean, std, min, quartiles, max for numeric colsdf.describe(include="object")   # summary for categorical columnsdf.head()df.isnull().sum()df.nunique()                    # unique value counts per columndf["category"].value_counts(normalize=True)  # class proportions

Visualizing the Data

Distributions, boxplots, and correlations.

python
import seaborn as snsimport matplotlib.pyplot as plt# Distribution of a numeric variablesns.histplot(df["income"], kde=True, bins=30)# Boxplot to spot outliers/spread by categorysns.boxplot(x="category", y="income", data=df)# Correlation heatmapcorr = df.corr(numeric_only=True)sns.heatmap(corr, annot=True, cmap="coolwarm", center=0)# Pairwise relationships between numeric featuressns.pairplot(df, hue="target", vars=["age", "income", "score"])plt.tight_layout()plt.show()

EDA Checklist

A systematic order for exploring a new dataset.

  • Shape & dtypes- confirm row/column counts and correct data types before anything else
  • Summary statistics- mean, median, std, min/max reveal scale and possible errors
  • Missing data pattern- check whether missingness is random or correlated with other features
  • Distribution shape- check skewness, multi-modality, and outliers with histograms/KDE
  • Correlation analysis- look for multicollinearity and target-feature relationships
  • Class balance- check the target variable distribution for classification tasks
  • Categorical cardinality- count unique values per categorical column to plan encoding
  • Bivariate analysis- explore relationships between pairs of features (scatter, boxplot, groupby)

Useful Pandas Methods

Quick lookups for common EDA operations.

  • df.groupby(col).agg()- compute grouped summary statistics
  • df.corr()- pairwise correlation matrix of numeric columns
  • df.value_counts()- frequency count of unique values in a Series
  • df.sample(n)- random subset of rows for a quick sanity check
  • df.select_dtypes()- filter columns by data type (e.g. include=['number'])
  • pd.crosstab()- cross-tabulation frequency table between two categorical columns
Pro Tip

Always plot the target variable's distribution first — a skewed regression target (e.g. housing prices) often benefits from a log transform, and a heavily imbalanced classification target changes which metrics and resampling strategies you should use downstream.

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