Parse simple dates

pandas does not infer that columns contain datetime data; it interprets them as object or string data unless told otherwise. Correctly modeling datetimes is easy when they are in a standard format -- we can use the parse_dates argument to tell read_excel() to read columns as datetime data.

The New Developer Survey responses contain some columns with easy-to-parse timestamps. In this exercise, you'll make sure they're the right data type.

pandas has been loaded as pd.

This exercise is part of the course

Streamlined Data Ingestion with pandas

View Course

Exercise instructions

Load fcc_survey.xlsx, making sure that the Part1StartTime column is parsed as datetime data.
View the first few values of the survey_data.Part1StartTime to make sure it contains datetimes.

Hands-on interactive exercise

Have a go at this exercise by completing this sample code.

# Load file, with Part1StartTime parsed as datetime data
survey_data = pd.read_excel("fcc_survey.xlsx",
                            ____)

# Print first few values of Part1StartTime
print(survey_data.Part1StartTime.____)

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