How should I convert numbers in a column to the same format style in Python?

Question

I have two columns Lat and Long in a data frame. I try to convert these strings into float but I have the following error:

ValueError: Unable to parse string "𝟒" at position 61754

I've noticed that in my data frame I have numbers written in different styles, even in bold text. I'm wondering if there is a way to convert the numbers in the same style.

Answer 1

Suppose you have this DataFrame:

  funny_numbers
0             𝟒
1             𝟝
2            𝟳𝟨

You can try .str.normalize to convert the Unicode characters to standard form:

df["funny_numbers"] = df["funny_numbers"].str.normalize("NFKD")
df["funny_numbers"] = pd.to_numeric(df["funny_numbers"])
print(df)

Prints:

  funny_numbers
0             4
1             5
2            76