This implements user defined list of functions to summarise aka describe() any pandas dataframe

user defined describe() for pandas

import pandas as pd
import numpy as np

def describe(x):
    data = [np.mean(x), x.std(),  x.median() - x.quantile(0.25), 
            x.median(), x.quantile(0.75) - x.median(), np.sum(x)]
    names = ['mean', 'std', '-err', '50%', '+err', 'sum']
    return pd.DataFrame(data, index=names).T
  
#functional call
#instead of calling default pandas command using df.describe()
#one has to call the following
df.apply(describe)