Numerical Computing with Python

How to do it...

1. Read in the college dataset, and set the institution name as the index:

>>> college = pd.read_csv('data/college.csv', index_col='INSTNM')

2. Attempt to select all colleges with names lexicographically between 'Sp' and 'Su':

>>> college.loc['Sp':'Su']KeyError: 'Sp'

3. As the index is not sorted, the preceding command fails. Let's go ahead and sort the index:

>>> college = college.sort_index()

4. Now, let's rerun the same command from step 2:

>>> college.loc['Sp':'Su']