How take a random row from a PySpark DataFrame?

Question

How can I get a random row from a PySpark DataFrame? I only see the method sample() which takes a fraction as parameter. Setting this fraction to 1/numberOfRows leads to random results, where sometimes I won’t get any row.

On RDD there is a method takeSample() that takes as a parameter the number of elements you want the sample to contain. I understand that this might be slow, as you have to count each partition, but is there a way to get something like this on a DataFrame?

Asked By: DanT

||

Source

Answer 1

You can simply call takeSample on a RDD:

df = sqlContext.createDataFrame(
    [(1, "a"), (2, "b"), (3, "c"), (4, "d")], ("k", "v"))
df.rdd.takeSample(False, 1, seed=0)
## [Row(k=3, v='c')]

If you don’t want to collect you can simply take a higher fraction and limit:

df.sample(False, 0.1, seed=0).limit(1)

Don’t pass a seed, and you should get a different DataFrame each time.

Answered By: zero323

Answer 2

Different Types of Sample

Randomly sample % of the data with and without replacement

import pyspark.sql.functions as F
#Randomly sample 50% of the data without replacement
sample1 = df.sample(False, 0.5, seed=0)

#Randomly sample 50% of the data with replacement
sample1 = df.sample(True, 0.5, seed=0)

#Take another sample exlcuding records from previous sample using Anti Join
sample2 = df.join(sample1, on='ID', how='left_anti').sample(False, 0.5, seed=0)

#Take another sample exlcuding records from previous sample using Where
sample1_ids = [row['ID'] for row in sample1.ID]
sample2 = df.where(~F.col('ID').isin(sample1_ids)).sample(False, 0.5, seed=0)

#Generate a startfied sample of the data across column(s)
#Sampling is probabilistic and thus cannot guarantee an exact number of rows
fractions = {
        'NJ': 0.5, #Take about 50% of records where state = NJ
    'NY': 0.25, #Take about 25% of records where state = NY
    'VA': 0.1, #Take about 10% of records where state = VA
}
stratified_sample = df.sampleBy(F.col('state'), fractions, seed=0)

Answered By: Yash Mahendra

Answer 3

Here’s an alternative using Pandas DataFrame.Sample method. This uses the spark applyInPandas method to distribute the groups, available from Spark 3.0.0. This allows you to select an exact number of rows per group.

I’ve added args and kwargs to the function so you can access the other arguments of DataFrame.Sample.

def sample_n_per_group(n, *args, **kwargs):
    def sample_per_group(pdf):
        return pdf.sample(n, *args, **kwargs)
    return sample_per_group

df = spark.createDataFrame(
    [
        (1, 1.0), 
        (1, 2.0), 
        (2, 3.0), 
        (2, 5.0), 
        (2, 10.0)
    ],
    ("id", "v")
)

(df.groupBy("id")
   .applyInPandas(
        sample_n_per_group(1, random_state=2), 
        schema=df.schema
   )
)

To be aware of the limitations for very large groups, from the documentation:

This function requires a full shuffle. All the data of a group will be
loaded into memory, so the user should be aware of the potential OOM
risk if data is skewed and certain groups are too large to fit in
memory.

Answered By: s_pike

How take a random row from a PySpark DataFrame?

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