Why won't the exp function work in pyspark?

Question

I'm trying to calculate odds ratios from the coefficients of a logistic regression but I'm encountering a problem best summed up by this code:

import pyspark.sql.functions as F 
F.exp(1.2)

This fails with py4j.Py4JException: Method exp([class java.lang.Double]) does not exist

An integer fails similarly. I don't get how a Double can cause a problem for the exp function?

Answer 1

If you have a look at the documentation for pyspark.sql.functions.exp(), it takes an input of a col object. Hence it will not work for a float value such as 1.2.

Create a dataframe or a Column object which you can use in F.exp()

Example would be:

df = df.withColumn("exp_x", F.exp(F.col("some_col_named_x")))