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We've just added “lambda columns” to rowboat.net! When starting with a dataset, you often have a column that's not *quite* in the correct format. Heights listed in feet and inches. Temperatures in Fahrenheit when you want celsius. GPS coordinates that are uniquely weird in their own weird way.

rowboat.netRowboatA lightning fast tool for understanding large datasets.

Ben Fry

@benfry.com

You can fix this sort of thing in a complicated data cleaning tool, or by firing up a Python notebook, but it's a lot just to make these quick changes. With this update, you can write a single line function that does the conversion and creates a new column.

Ben Fry

@benfry.com

ZIP codes trashed by Excel shaving off the leading zeroes? Poof, fixed! And then we can see them mapped instantly:

Ben Fry

@benfry.com

Temperature data listed in Kelvin, but needs to be understood by a less Kelvin audience? Easily fixed, and now we can see a more relatable distribution:

5/10/26, 3:04 pm0 reposts4 likes

Ben Fry

@benfry.com

This has been one of our most-requested features. We've been testing it the last couple weeks and have found it incredibly useful for the many quick options it opens up. We hope you'll enjoy it too!