Groupby apply mixed-type casting problem

[wesm]

the following groupby transform results in things getting casted to object...

df = DataFrame({'d' : [1.,1.,1.,2.,2.,2.],
                'c' : np.tile(['a','b','c'], 2),
                'v' : np.arange(1., 7.)})
# in IPython
In [34]: df
Out[34]: 
   c  d  v
0  a  1  1
1  b  1  2
2  c  1  3
3  a  2  4
4  b  2  5
5  c  2  6

Now write a small transform function:

def f(group):
    v = group['v']
    group['v2'] = (v - v.min()) / (v.max() - v.min())
    return group

Note that this also handles NAs since the v variable is a pandas Series object.

Now group by the d column and apply f:

In [36]: df.groupby('d').apply(f)
Out[36]: 
   c  d  v  v2 
0  a  1  1  0  
1  b  1  2  0.5
2  c  1  3  1  
3  a  2  4  0  
4  b  2  5  0.5
5  c  2  6  1