I'm working on a script to do some pricing. Have a dataframe which contains a quantity list:
| Name | Volume | Area | 
|---|---|---|
| Wood | 133 | 256 | 
| Steel | 55 | 330 | 
(and 1800 more lines like those)
What I need to do is create a third column in the df that contains the "true" quantity. Pretty much, on some materials it's the volume, on others it's the area.
| Name | Volume | Area | Qty | 
|---|---|---|---|
| Wood | 133 | 256 | 133 | 
| Steel | 55 | 330 | 330 | 
So far I've thought to create a dictionary:
my_dict = {'Wood':'Volume', 'Steel':'Area'}
Using map (or replace) I put that into a column in the df:
| Name | Volume | Area | Datafield | 
|---|---|---|---|
| Wood | 133 | 256 | Volume | 
| Steel | 55 | 330 | Area | 
Now, how would I go about putting the quantity into the Quantity column, based on what Datafield says?
I tried
df['Quantity'] = df[df['Datafield']]
But, it crashed and I'm stuck.
 
    