"I wish there was a way to easily manipulate this huge multi-dimensional array in Python...", I thought, as I stared at a huge chunk of satellite data on my laptop. The data was from a satellite measuring air quality - and I wanted to slice and dice the data in some supposedly simple ways. Using pure numpy - the go-to library when the words 'multi-dimensional', 'array' and 'python' are mentioned in the same sentence - was just such a pain. What I wished for was something like pandas - with datetime indexes, fancy ways of selecting subsets, group-by operations and so on - but something that would work with my huge multi-dimensional array.
The solution: XArray - a wonderful library which provides the power of pandas for multi-dimensional data. In this talk I will introduce the XArray library by showing how just a few lines of code can answer questions about my data that would take a lot of complex code to answer with pure numpy - questions like 'What is the average air quality in