Pandas Value Counts with Gubernatorial Data (Solution)

Load the data

import pandas as pd
df  = pd.read_csv("https://raw.githubusercontent.com/melaniewalsh/responsible-datasets-in-context/refs/heads/main/datasets/gubernatorial-bios/gubernatorial_bios_final.csv")

Exercise 1

What are the top 5 birth states for governors?

Save as top_birth_states and then view the resulting dataframe.

top_birth_states = (
    df['birth_state_territory']
    .value_counts()
    .head(5)
)
top_birth_states

birth_state_territory
New York          162
Virginia          147
Pennsylvania      112
Massachusetts     102
South Carolina    101
Name: count, dtype: int64

Discuss/consider: What states are the most common birth spots for governors? Are there similar traits between the top states?

Exercise 2

Let’s now look at the initial age for governors and the distribution. We already visualized the average starting age in the main data essay, but let’s look at the distribution across the entire dataframe

First, let’s cut the age_at_start variable into bins, so people between ages 20 and 30 get mapped to 20, 30 and 40 to 30 etc. Let’s call this new column age_bucket. We will use the Pandas function [pd.cut]{https://pandas.pydata.org/docs/reference/api/pandas.cut.html}.

Now let’s display the value_counts of the age_bucket column and let’s sort by the age.

df['age_bucket'] = pd.cut(df['age_at_start'], bins=[20,30,40,50,60,70,80])
df['age_bucket'].value_counts().sort_index()

age_bucket
(20, 30]       7
(30, 40]     374
(40, 50]    1004
(50, 60]     789
(60, 70]     279
(70, 80]      32
Name: count, dtype: int64

Discuss/consider: Which age range has the most governors?

Exercise 3:

Let’s look at the outlier governors who started office at or below the age of 30. Let’s filter the dataset down to this set by filtering on the age_at_start column, call it young_governors and display it.

young_governors = df[df['age_at_start'] <= 30]
young_governors

	Unnamed: 0	state_territory	governor	party	first_year	years_in_office	school	birth_state_territory	birth_date	bio_text	college_attendance	ivy_attendance	lawyer	military_service	age_at_start	gender	born_in_state_territory	intl_born	intl_born_details	age_bucket
522	522	Georgia	George Walton	Whig, Democratic-Republican	1779	1779 - 1780	NaN	Virginia	1749-01-01	GEORGE WALTON, the youngest signer of the Decl...	0	0	1	1	30	male	0	0	NaN	(20, 30]
740	740	Kansas	Samuel Johnson Crawford	Republican	1865	1865 - 1868	Cincinnati College	Indiana	1835-04-10	SAMUEL JOHNSON CRAWFORD, the third governor of...	1	0	1	1	30	male	0	0	NaN	(20, 30]
833	833	Louisiana	Henry Clay Warmoth	Republican	1868	1868 - 1872	NaN	Illinois	1842-05-09	HENRY C. WARMOTH was born in Mc Leansboro, Ill...	0	0	1	1	26	male	0	0	NaN	(20, 30]
976	976	Maryland	Edward Lloyd	Democratic-Republican	1809	1809 - 1811	NaN	Maryland	1779-07-22	EDWARD LLOYD was born in Talbot County, Maryla...	0	0	0	1	30	male	1	0	NaN	(20, 30]
1453	1453	New Jersey	Leon R. Taylor	Democratic	1913	1913 - 1914	Denison University	New Jersey	1883-10-26	Leon R. Taylor was born in Asbury Park, New Je...	1	0	0	0	30	male	1	0	NaN	(20, 30]
1898	1898	Rhode Island	William Sprague	Republican	1860	1860 - 1863	NaN	Rhode Island	1830-09-12	WILLIAM SPRAGUE was born in Cranston, Rhode Is...	0	0	0	1	30	male	1	0	NaN	(20, 30]
2439	2439	Wyoming	Amos Walker Barber	Republican	1890	1890 - 1893	University of Pennsylvania	Pennsylvania	1860-07-25	AMOS WALKER BARBER was born in Doylestown, Pen...	1	1	0	1	30	male	0	0	NaN	(20, 30]

Discuss/consider: Who are the youngest governors in American History? What era are they from? Take a look at some of their Wikipedia pages and NGA biographies online.