Practice Solution #3: Loading and Filtering Data

import pandas as pd

CITY_DATA = { 'chicago': 'chicago.csv',
              'new york city': 'new_york_city.csv',
              'washington': 'washington.csv' }

def load_data(city, month, day):
    """
    Loads data for the specified city and filters by month and day if applicable.

    Args:
        (str) city - name of the city to analyze
        (str) month - name of the month to filter by, or "all" to apply no month filter
        (str) day - name of the day of week to filter by, or "all" to apply no day filter
    Returns:
        df - Pandas DataFrame containing city data filtered by month and day
    """

    # load data file into a dataframe
    df = pd.read_csv(CITY_DATA[city])

    # convert the Start Time column to datetime
    df['Start Time'] = pd.to_datetime(df['Start Time'])

    # extract month and day of week from Start Time to create new columns
    df['month'] = df['Start Time'].dt.month
    df['day_of_week'] = df['Start Time'].dt.weekday_name

    # filter by month if applicable
    if month != 'all':
        # use the index of the months list to get the corresponding int
        months = ['january', 'february', 'march', 'april', 'may', 'june']
        month = months.index(month) + 1

        # filter by month to create the new dataframe
        df = df[df['month'] == month]

    # filter by day of week if applicable
    if day != 'all':
        # filter by day of week to create the new dataframe
        df = df[df['day_of_week'] == day.title()]

    return df