Countries of the world exercise with pandas

cow.py

# Countries of the world exercise.
# download cow.txt and put it in your project directory

import pandas as pd

def closes_to(data, abbreviated_name):
    country = data[data.ISO3166A2 == abbreviated_name]
    latitude = country.BGNc_latitude.values[0]
    longitude = country.BGNc_longitude.values[0]
    data['distance_from_{}'.format(abbreviated_name)] = \
        ((data.BGNc_latitude - latitude) ** 2 + \
        (data.BGNc_longitude - longitude) ** 2) ** 0.5

    return data.ix[data['distance_from_{}'.format(abbreviated_name)]. \
        argsort()[1]]  # argsort 1 because there's the input in place 0

data = pd.read_csv('cow.txt', skiprows=28, sep=';')
closes_to_israel = closes_to(data, 'IL')
print('Closes country to Israel:\n{}'.format(closes_to_israel))