Richard Iannone - Great Tables for Everyone | SciPy 2024

Learn how Richard Iannone's Great Tables package helps create publication-quality tables in Python with customizable formatting, data visualization, and accessibility

Key takeaways
  • Package “Great Tables” enables creation of publication-quality tables in Python with clean, readable formatting

  • Key features include:

    • Custom fonts and themes
    • Heat maps and color visualization
    • Currency, date, scientific notation formatting
    • Nano plots for visualizing trends within cells
    • Column spanners and row grouping
    • Customizable headers, titles and footnotes
  • Tables can be output as HTML and images, with LaTeX support coming soon

  • Built to work with both Pandas and Polars dataframes, with special selector syntax for Polars

  • Includes built-in accessibility features like colorblind-friendly palettes

  • Emphasizes reproducible workflows by creating tables programmatically instead of manual formatting

  • Offers interactive features like hoverable values in nano plots

  • Provides comprehensive formatting options:

    • Scientific notation
    • Currency codes
    • Custom decimal places
    • Unit symbols
    • Greek characters
    • Chemical formulas
  • Maintains a balance between data density and readability through smart formatting defaults

  • Available on PyPI with extensive documentation, examples gallery and blog posts