ds-tables

name	ds-tables
version	1
description	Use when building a publication-quality table in Python — 'regression table', 'results table', 'summary statistics table', 'etable', 'coefplot', 'great_tables', 'GT', 'gt table', 'format a table for the paper', 'export table to LaTeX/HTML', significance stars, spanners, or column formatting for a table headed into a paper, slide deck, or notebook.
user-invocable	true

Contents

• Which Tool
• House Style
• Table Enforcement
• Quick Start
• Additional Resources

Publication Tables in Python

Two libraries, one stack: pyfixest.etable() builds regression tables and renders them through great_tables, so anything etable() returns can be further styled with GT methods. Both render natively in marimo and Jupyter.

Which Tool

Building	Use	Reference
Regression results (coefficients, SEs, stars, FE panel)	pf.etable([fit1, fit2])	references/pyfixest-tables.md
Summary stats, descriptives, any DataFrame	GT(df) method chain	references/great-tables.md
Coefficient / event-study plot	pf.coefplot(), pf.iplot()	references/pyfixest-tables.md
LaTeX or HTML for a manuscript	etable(..., type="tex" | "html", file_name=...)	references/pyfixest-tables.md

House Style

The same rules as ds-figures, applied to cells instead of axes.

	Rule	Why
Labels	Every row label, column header, spanner, and cell value is prose, never an identifier. Row labels are Capitalized; column headers and spanners are Title Case	The reader never saw your DataFrame. glass_lewis is not a scenario, Glass Lewis is; log_mktcap is not a covariate, Log Market Cap is. A table of variable names is a df.describe() dump, not an exhibit.
Type	Serif throughout, matching the figures and the body text	A table set in the library's default sans sits next to serif figures and reads as a different document.
Numbering	Main exhibits Table 1 … Table N, consecutive in order of first mention. Appendix exhibits restart as Table A1 … Table AN, numbered independently of the figures	Numbers are the reader's only address for an exhibit. Tables and figures each get their own sequence — "Table 3" and "Figure 3" coexist.

etable() takes the relabelling directly — there is no reason to ship raw names:

LABELS = {
    "glass_lewis": "Glass Lewis",
    "iss_rec": "ISS Recommendation",
    "log_mktcap": "Log Market Cap",
    "support_rate": "Shareholder Support Rate",
}
pf.etable([fit1, fit2], labels=LABELS, coef_fmt="b* \n (se)")

For a GT table, rename the row-label column and its values before construction — cols_label() only fixes headers, never the row labels sitting in the body.

Table Enforcement

IRON LAW: NO TABLE CLAIM WITHOUT RENDERING IT

A table that "looks right" in code is not a table. Before claiming one is done:

1. RENDER it — display the GT object, or write the tex/html file
2. READ the rendered output (in a notebook: look at it; for tex/html: read the file)
3. VERIFY the numbers against the source fit or DataFrame
4. VERIFY the labels, stars, and notes say what the caller thinks they say — no identifiers anywhere, row labels Capitalized, headers Title Case
5. VERIFY nothing is clipped or overflowing: no …-truncated label, no column running past the page or container width
6. CLAIM done only after the render is inspected

Handing over an unrendered table is NOT HELPFUL — the user pastes it into a paper and discovers the stars are missing at submission time.

Table Facts

• The default etable() prints stars (1.873***) — but the moment you pass coef_fmt yourself, stars come only from a * token in it. coef_fmt="b \n (se)" silently drops the stars you had for free; "b* \n (se)" keeps them. Verified on pyfixest 0.60.0: default → 1.873***, explicit "b \n (se)" → 1.873. signif_code only sets the thresholds, never whether stars render.
• keep / drop take regex, not names. keep="x1" also matches x10 and log_x1; use r"^x1$" or exact_match=True.
• pyfixest drops singleton fixed-effect groups by default and prints a warning, not an error — the observation count silently differs from the same spec elsewhere unless you read the warning.
• etable() returns a great_tables GT object when type="gt" (the default). Reach for the GT method chain for anything etable doesn't parameterize instead of post-processing strings.
• fmt_* methods take columns= and rows=; omitting both applies the format to the whole table, which is rarely what a mixed-type table wants.
• Unlabelled coefficients render as the raw variable name. etable() prints whatever is in the formula, so log_mktcap and glass_lewis ship verbatim unless labels= covers them — and a name missing from the dict fails silently, printing the identifier rather than raising. Every table needs its labels= dict checked against the rendered output, not against the dict.
• cols_label() does not touch row labels. It renames column headers only; the row-label column's values come from the DataFrame, so identifiers there survive every styling call. Rename the values in the DataFrame before GT().
• str.title() is not Title Case for exhibit labels — it yields "Log Market Cap By Iss Rec", capitalizing the preposition and destroying the acronym. Write the strings by hand in the labels dict.

Red Flags — STOP If About To:

• Report a regression table as final without having rendered and read it → STOP. Unrendered is unverified.
• Write a custom coef_fmt without a * token → STOP. You just turned off the stars the default gave you; signif_code will not bring them back.
• Hand-edit LaTeX that etable() produced → STOP. Round-trip the change through etable()/GT parameters, or the next re-run silently reverts it.
• Retype numbers from a fit into a table by hand → STOP. Every hand-typed number is an unverified claim; pass the fit objects.
• Ship a row label, column header, spanner, or cell value that is a column name or a code (glass_lewis, log_mktcap, support_rate) → STOP. The reader has never seen your schema. Map it to prose: "Glass Lewis", "Log Market Cap".
• Write row labels in lowercase, or headers in sentence case → STOP. Row labels are Capitalized, headers and spanners are Title Case.
• Call .title() to produce a header → STOP. It capitalizes prepositions and mangles acronyms; write the string.
• Number an appendix table in the main sequence, or share a counter with the figures → STOP. Appendix tables are A1…AN, and tables count separately from figures.
• Declare a type="tex" table done without compiling it → STOP. Overflow past the text block is invisible in the notebook render.

Quick Start

import pyfixest as pf

fit1 = pf.feols("y ~ x1 + x2 | fe1", data=df, vcov={"CRV1": "cluster_var"})
fit2 = pf.feols("y ~ x1 + x2 | fe1 + fe2", data=df, vcov={"CRV1": "cluster_var"})

pf.etable(
    [fit1, fit2],
    coef_fmt="b* \n (se)",              # stars REQUIRE the * token
    labels={"x1": "Treatment"},
    notes="Standard errors clustered by firm.",
)

from great_tables import GT, md

(GT(summary_df)
 .tab_header(title="Summary Statistics")
 .fmt_number(columns=["mean", "sd"], decimals=2)
 .cols_label(mean=md("**Mean**"))
 .tab_source_note("Sample: 1996-2024."))

Additional Resources

Reference Files

• references/pyfixest-tables.md — full etable() parameter reference: coef_fmt tokens, significance codes, keep/drop, labels, model headers, FE display, custom stats, coefplot/iplot, gotchas
• references/great-tables.md — GT constructor, method-chaining pattern, every fmt_* method, column management, headers/spanners, styling, export

Related

• /marimo, /jupytext — where these tables render
• ds-implement — the DS phase that produces exhibits