Final answer:
To change a column name in a Python dataset, use the pandas library's DataFrame rename() method or assign a new list of names to the DataFrame's columns attribute. Rename individual columns with a dictionary argument or all columns with a new list.
Step-by-step explanation:
To change a column name in a dataset in Python, you can use the pandas library, which is widely used for data manipulation and analysis. You can rename columns using the rename() method of the DataFrame object. Suppose you have a DataFrame df, and you want to rename a column named 'old_name' to 'new_name'. Here's how you can do it:
import pandas as pd
df = pd.DataFrame(...)
df.rename(columns={'old_name': 'new_name'}, inplace=True)
By setting inplace=True, you update the original DataFrame rather than creating a new one. If you want to change multiple column names, you can pass a dictionary with the old names as keys and the new names as values to the rename() function.
Another way to rename columns is by assigning a new list of column names to the columns attribute of the DataFrame:
df.columns = ['new_name1', 'new_name2', ..., 'new_nameN']
This will replace all the column names with the names you've provided in the list, so be sure the list contains a new name for each column.