How can I check for NaN values?

Use math.isnan:

>>> import math
>>> x = float('nan')
>>> math.isnan(x)
True

The usual way to test for a NaN is to see if it's equal to itself:

def isNaN(num):
    return num != num

numpy.isnan(number) tells you if it's NaN or not.

Here are three ways where you can test a variable is "NaN" or not.

import pandas as pd
import numpy as np
import math

# For single variable all three libraries return single boolean
x1 = float("nan")

print(f"It's pd.isna: {pd.isna(x1)}")
print(f"It's np.isnan: {np.isnan(x1)}}")
print(f"It's math.isnan: {math.isnan(x1)}}")

Output

It's pd.isna: True
It's np.isnan: True
It's math.isnan: True

It seems that checking if it's equal to itself

x!=x

is the fastest.

import pandas as pd 
import numpy as np 
import math 

x = float('nan')

%timeit x!=x                                                                                                                                                                                                                        
44.8 ns ± 0.152 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 10000000 loops each)

%timeit math.isnan(x)                                                                                                                                                                                                               
94.2 ns ± 0.955 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 10000000 loops each)

%timeit pd.isna(x) 
281 ns ± 5.48 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1000000 loops each)

%timeit np.isnan(x)                                                                                                                                                                                                                 
1.38 µs ± 15.7 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1000000 loops each)

math.isnan()

or compare the number to itself. NaN is always != NaN, otherwise (e.g. if it is a number) the comparison should succeed.

Another method if you're stuck on <2.6, you don't have numpy, and you don't have IEEE 754 support:

def isNaN(x):
    return str(x) == str(1e400*0)

How to remove NaN (float) item(s) from a list of mixed data types

If you have mixed types in an iterable, here is a solution that does not use numpy:

from math import isnan

Z = ['a','b', float('NaN'), 'd', float('1.1024')]

[x for x in Z if not (
                      type(x) == float # let's drop all float values…
                      and isnan(x) # … but only if they are nan
                      )]

['a', 'b', 'd', 1.1024]

Short-circuit evaluation means that isnan will not be called on values that are not of type 'float', as False and (…) quickly evaluates to False without having to evaluate the right-hand side.

In Python 3.6 checking on a string value x math.isnan(x) and np.isnan(x) raises an error. So I can't check if the given value is NaN or not if I don't know beforehand it's a number. The following seems to solve this issue

if str(x)=='nan' and type(x)!='str':
    print ('NaN')
else:
    print ('non NaN')

Comparison pd.isna, math.isnan and np.isnan and their flexibility dealing with different type of objects.

The table below shows if the type of object can be checked with the given method:

+------------+-----+---------+------+--------+------+
|   Method   | NaN | numeric | None | string | list |
+------------+-----+---------+------+--------+------+
| pd.isna    | yes | yes     | yes  | yes    | yes  |
| math.isnan | yes | yes     | no   | no     | no   |
| np.isnan   | yes | yes     | no   | no     | yes  | <-- # will error on mixed type list
+------------+-----+---------+------+--------+------+

pd.isna

The most flexible method to check for different types of missing values.

None of the answers cover the flexibility of pd.isna. While math.isnan and np.isnan will return True for NaN values, you cannot check for different type of objects like None or strings. Both methods will return an error, so checking a list with mixed types will be cumbersom. This while pd.isna is flexible and will return the correct boolean for different kind of types:

In [1]: import pandas as pd

In [2]: import numpy as np

In [3]: missing_values = [3, None, np.NaN, pd.NA, pd.NaT, '10']

In [4]: pd.isna(missing_values)
Out[4]: array([False,  True,  True,  True,  True, False])

For nan of type float

>>> import pandas as pd
>>> value = float(nan)
>>> type(value)
>>> <class 'float'>
>>> pd.isnull(value)
True
>>>
>>> value = 'nan'
>>> type(value)
>>> <class 'str'>
>>> pd.isnull(value)
False

for strings in panda take pd.isnull:

if not pd.isnull(atext):
  for word in nltk.word_tokenize(atext):

the function as feature extraction for NLTK

def act_features(atext):
features = {}
if not pd.isnull(atext):
  for word in nltk.word_tokenize(atext):
    if word not in default_stopwords:
      features['cont({})'.format(word.lower())]=True
return features