Add an ends function that shows both head and tail of the df

Add the following function to pd. dataFrame and pd.Series

def ends(df, x=5):
    """Returns both head and tail of the dataframe or series.
    
    Args:
        x (int): Optional number of rows to return for each head and tail
    """
    print('{} rows x {} columns'.format(np.shape(df)[0],np.shape(df)[1]))
    return df.head(x).append(df.tail(x))

Problem description

Often both the beginning and end of a df are of interest, fore example in a time series.

This leads to calling df.head() df.tail() in two seperate notebook cells. This is not only tedious, but also leads to a cluttered notebook. A function that returns both of these + a print on the number of rows and columns, thus allowing a check if the index matches the number of rows.

Example

import pandas as pd
import numpy as np
df = pd.DataFrame(np.random.rand(1500,6))
print(ends(df,2))

1500 rows x 6 columns

	0	1	2	3	4	5
0	0.949695	0.160928	0.434134	0.943103	0.477830	0.903479
1	0.736711	0.103746	0.028694	0.205910	0.226061	0.458452
1498	0.362950	0.586887	0.399681	0.115366	0.239049	0.386281
1499	0.018102	0.852198	0.880993	0.671604	0.705586	0.802237

Output of pd.show_versions()

INSTALLED VERSIONS

commit: None python: 3.6.2.final.0 python-bits: 64 OS: Windows OS-release: 8.1 machine: AMD64 processor: Intel64 Family 6 Model 61 Stepping 4, GenuineIntel byteorder: little LC_ALL: None LANG: None LOCALE: None.None

pandas: 0.21.0 pytest: 3.3.1 pip: 9.0.1 setuptools: 38.2.4 Cython: 0.26.1 numpy: 1.12.1 scipy: 0.19.1 pyarrow: None xarray: None IPython: 6.1.0 sphinx: 1.6.3 patsy: 0.4.1 dateutil: 2.6.1 pytz: 2017.3 blosc: None bottleneck: 1.2.1 tables: 3.4.2 numexpr: 2.6.2 feather: None matplotlib: 2.0.2 openpyxl: 2.4.8 xlrd: 1.1.0 xlwt: 1.3.0 xlsxwriter: 0.9.8 lxml: 3.8.0 bs4: 4.6.0 html5lib: 0.999999999 sqlalchemy: 1.1.13 pymysql: None psycopg2: None jinja2: 2.10 s3fs: None fastparquet: None pandas_gbq: None pandas_datareader: None

[jreback]

@icfly2 #18749 already is updating he doc-strings, so natural to add there.

Love to have you contribute on other issues!

[adamrossnelson]

Worth a mention that this issue also relates to: https://github.com/pandas-dev/pandas/issues/42837

The idea is that there is a way to preserve vertical screen space when inspecting ‘tall’ (many rows, few cols) data frames.