Retain Row values without affecting other columns

Question

I have a data frame that appears as follows:

	AOI	Year	Hectares
1	Quneitra	2015	11.46
2	Quneitra	2016	12.35
3	Quneitra	2017	14.65
4	Hamah	2015	1.8
5	Hamah	2016	2.7
6	Hamah	2017	3.5
9	Tartus	2015	12.2
10	Tartus	2016	12.7
11	Tartus	2017	14.2

How can I change this dataframe to remove the duplicate names of the AOI column without affecting the data on the adjacent columns?

Answer 1

You can use:

df.loc[df['AOI'].duplicated(), 'AOI'] = ''

but be aware that this should be done display only, this will otherwise prevent you to use your data for analysis!

As a temporary way (to avoid modifying the original DataFrame):

df2 = df.assign(AOI=df['AOI'].mask(df['AOI'].duplicated(), ''))

output:

         AOI  Year  Hectares
1   Quneitra  2015     11.46
2             2016     12.35
3             2017     14.65
4      Hamah  2015      1.80
5             2016      2.70
6             2017      3.50
9     Tartus  2015     12.20
10            2016     12.70
11            2017     14.20