Databricks Machine Learning Associate Exam - Topic 4 Question 43 Discussion

The function mapInPandas in the PySpark DataFrame API allows for applying a function to each partition of the DataFrame. When working with grouped data, groupby followed by applyInPandas is the correct approach to apply a function to each group as a separate Pandas DataFrame. However, if the function should apply across each partition of the grouped data rather than on each individual group, mapInPandas would be utilized. Since the code snippet indicates the use of groupby, the intent seems to be to apply train_model on each group specifically, which aligns with applyInPandas. Thus, applyInPandas is a better fit to ensure that each group generated by groupby is processed through the train_model function, preserving the partitioning and grouping integrity.

Reference

PySpark Documentation on applying functions to grouped data: https://spark.apache.org/docs/latest/api/python/reference/api/pyspark.sql.GroupedData.applyInPandas.html