python - Getting UnicodeDecodeError when transposing DataFrame in iPython -

i importing excel table http://www.gapminder.org/data/ want switch columns , rows of table. , error getting: "unicodedecodeerror: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xc3 in position 23389: ordinal not in range(128)"

i trying encode/decode dataframe dataframe.decode('utf-8') says dataframe not have such attribute.

the error occurs because transpose cannot convert data ascii. right? why need when table pure numbers?

thank much.

there more information on error:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------- unicodedecodeerror                        traceback (most recent call last) <ipython-input-190-a252f2a45657> in <module>()       1 #your code here       2 countries = countries.transpose() ----> 3 income.transpose()       4 #income = income.decode('utf-8')       5 #content = content.decode('utf-8')  /users/sergey/anaconda/lib/python2.7/site-packages/ipython/core/displayhook.pyc in __call__(self, result)     236                 self.write_format_data(format_dict, md_dict)     237                 self.log_output(format_dict) --> 238             self.finish_displayhook()     239      240     def cull_cache(self):  /users/sergey/anaconda/lib/python2.7/site-packages/ipython/kernel/zmq/displayhook.pyc in finish_displayhook(self)      70         sys.stderr.flush()      71         if self.msg['content']['data']: ---> 72             self.session.send(self.pub_socket, self.msg, ident=self.topic)      73         self.msg = none      74   /users/sergey/anaconda/lib/python2.7/site-packages/ipython/kernel/zmq/session.pyc in send(self, stream, msg_or_type, content, parent, ident, buffers, track, header, metadata)     647         if self.adapt_version:     648             msg = adapt(msg, self.adapt_version) --> 649         to_send = self.serialize(msg, ident)     650         to_send.extend(buffers)     651         longest = max([ len(s) s in to_send ])  /users/sergey/anaconda/lib/python2.7/site-packages/ipython/kernel/zmq/session.pyc in serialize(self, msg, ident)     551             content = self.none     552         elif isinstance(content, dict): --> 553             content = self.pack(content)     554         elif isinstance(content, bytes):     555             # content packed, in relayed message  /users/sergey/anaconda/lib/python2.7/site-packages/ipython/kernel/zmq/session.pyc in <lambda>(obj)      83 # disallow nan, because it's not valid json      84 json_packer = lambda obj: jsonapi.dumps(obj, default=date_default, ---> 85     ensure_ascii=false, allow_nan=false,      86 )      87 json_unpacker = lambda s: jsonapi.loads(s)  /users/sergey/anaconda/lib/python2.7/site-packages/zmq/utils/jsonapi.pyc in dumps(o, **kwargs)      38         kwargs['separators'] = (',', ':')      39  ---> 40     s = jsonmod.dumps(o, **kwargs)      41       42     if isinstance(s, unicode):  /users/sergey/anaconda/lib/python2.7/json/__init__.pyc in dumps(obj, skipkeys, ensure_ascii, check_circular, allow_nan, cls, indent, separators, encoding, default, sort_keys, **kw)     248         check_circular=check_circular, allow_nan=allow_nan, indent=indent,     249         separators=separators, encoding=encoding, default=default, --> 250         sort_keys=sort_keys, **kw).encode(obj)     251      252   /users/sergey/anaconda/lib/python2.7/json/encoder.pyc in encode(self, o)     208         if not isinstance(chunks, (list, tuple)):     209             chunks = list(chunks) --> 210         return ''.join(chunks)     211      212     def iterencode(self, o, _one_shot=false):  unicodedecodeerror: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xc3 in position 23389: ordinal not in range(128) 

after spent 40min on it, problem solved , have no idea how. thing did added code:

#encoding=utf8  import sys reload(sys)   sys.setdefaultencoding('utf8') 

but when delete peace, still working. know why? thank you!!!!

it's bit difficult answer authoritatively without more specific knowledge of ipython session, here educated guesses:

as why error, though data numeric, 1 of index labels (which presumably contain text).

as why still works when delete code, if working in ipython notebook, once run code setting default encoding utf-8, setting stays in effect until either

• some other code run changes setting, or
• you restart python kernel