ENH: Implement multi-column DataFrame.quantiles

doc/source/whatsnew/v1.5.0.rst

@@ -292,6 +292,7 @@ Other enhancements
 - :class:`Series` reducers (e.g. ``min``, ``max``, ``sum``, ``mean``) will now successfully operate when the dtype is numeric and ``numeric_only=True`` is provided; previously this would raise a ``NotImplementedError`` (:issue:`47500`)
 - :meth:`RangeIndex.union` now can return a :class:`RangeIndex` instead of a :class:`Int64Index` if the resulting values are equally spaced (:issue:`47557`, :issue:`43885`)
 - :meth:`DataFrame.compare` now accepts an argument ``result_names`` to allow the user to specify the result's names of both left and right DataFrame which are being compared. This is by default ``'self'`` and ``'other'`` (:issue:`44354`)
+- :meth:`DataFrame.quantile` gained a ``method`` argument that can accept ``table`` to evaluate multi-column quantiles (:issue:`43881`)
 - :meth:`Series.add_suffix`, :meth:`DataFrame.add_suffix`, :meth:`Series.add_prefix` and :meth:`DataFrame.add_prefix` support a ``copy`` argument. If ``False``, the underlying data is not copied in the returned object (:issue:`47934`)
 
 .. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

pandas/core/frame.py

@@ -80,7 +80,10 @@
     npt,
 )
 from pandas.compat._optional import import_optional_dependency
-from pandas.compat.numpy import function as nv
+from pandas.compat.numpy import (
+    function as nv,
+    np_percentile_argname,
+)
 from pandas.util._decorators import (
     Appender,
     Substitution,
@@ -11148,6 +11151,7 @@ def quantile(
         axis: Axis = 0,
         numeric_only: bool | lib.NoDefault = no_default,
         interpolation: str = "linear",
+        method: Literal["single", "table"] = "single",
     ):
         """
         Return values at the given quantile over requested axis.
@@ -11176,6 +11180,10 @@ def quantile(
             * higher: `j`.
             * nearest: `i` or `j` whichever is nearest.
             * midpoint: (`i` + `j`) / 2.
+        method : {'single', 'table'}, default 'single'
+            Whether to compute quantiles per-column ('single') or over all columns
+            ('table'). When 'table', the only allowed interpolation methods are
+            'nearest', 'lower', and 'higher'.
 
         Returns
         -------
@@ -11205,6 +11213,17 @@ def quantile(
         0.1  1.3   3.7
         0.5  2.5  55.0
 
+        Specifying `method='table'` will compute the quantile over all columns.
+
+        >>> df.quantile(.1, method="table", interpolation="nearest")
+        a    1
+        b    1
+        Name: 0.1, dtype: int64
+        >>> df.quantile([.1, .5], method="table", interpolation="nearest")
+             a    b
+        0.1  1    1
+        0.5  3  100
+
         Specifying `numeric_only=False` will also compute the quantile of
         datetime and timedelta data.
 
@@ -11229,9 +11248,17 @@ def quantile(
         if not is_list_like(q):
             # BlockManager.quantile expects listlike, so we wrap and unwrap here
             res_df = self.quantile(
-                [q], axis=axis, numeric_only=numeric_only, interpolation=interpolation
+                [q],
+                axis=axis,
+                numeric_only=numeric_only,
+                interpolation=interpolation,
+                method=method,
             )
-            res = res_df.iloc[0]
+            if method == "single":
+                res = res_df.iloc[0]
+            else:
+                # cannot directly iloc over sparse arrays
+                res = res_df.T.iloc[:, 0]
             if axis == 1 and len(self) == 0:
                 # GH#41544 try to get an appropriate dtype
                 dtype = find_common_type(list(self.dtypes))
@@ -11259,7 +11286,43 @@ def quantile(
             res = self._constructor([], index=q, columns=cols, dtype=dtype)
             return res.__finalize__(self, method="quantile")
 
-        res = data._mgr.quantile(qs=q, axis=1, interpolation=interpolation)
+        valid_method = {"single", "table"}
+        if method not in valid_method:
+            raise ValueError(
+                f"Invalid method: {method}. Method must be in {valid_method}."
+            )
+        if method == "single":
+            res = data._mgr.quantile(qs=q, axis=1, interpolation=interpolation)
+        elif method == "table":
+            valid_interpolation = {"nearest", "lower", "higher"}
+            if interpolation not in valid_interpolation:
+                raise ValueError(
+                    f"Invalid interpolation: {interpolation}. "
+                    f"Interpolation must be in {valid_interpolation}"
+                )
+            # handle degenerate case
+            if len(data) == 0:
+                if data.ndim == 2:
+                    dtype = find_common_type(list(self.dtypes))
+                else:
+                    dtype = self.dtype
+                return self._constructor([], index=q, columns=data.columns, dtype=dtype)
+
+            q_idx = np.quantile(  # type: ignore[call-overload]
+                np.arange(len(data)), q, **{np_percentile_argname: interpolation}
+            )
+
+            by = data.columns
+            if len(by) > 1:
+                keys = [data._get_label_or_level_values(x) for x in by]
+                indexer = lexsort_indexer(keys)
+            else:
+                by = by[0]
+                k = data._get_label_or_level_values(by)  # type: ignore[arg-type]
+                indexer = nargsort(k)
+
+            res = data._mgr.take(indexer[q_idx], verify=False)
+            res.axes[1] = q
 
         result = self._constructor(res)
         return result.__finalize__(self, method="quantile")