title: Determining Pandas Column DataType
body: <p>Sometimes when data is imported to Pandas Dataframe, it always imports as type <code>object</code>.  This is fine and well for doing most operations, but I am trying to create a custom export function, and my question is this:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Is there a way to force Pandas to infer the data types of the input data?</li>
  <li>If not, is there a way after the data is loaded to infer the data types somehow?</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>I know I can tell Pandas that this is of type int, str, etc.. but I don't want to do that, I was hoping pandas could be smart enough to know all the data types when a user imports or adds a column.</p>
  
  <p>EDIT - example of import</p>
  
  <pre><code>a = ['a']
  col = ['somename']
  df = pd.DataFrame(a, columns=col)
  print(df.dtypes)
  &gt;&gt;&gt; somename    object
  dtype: object
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The type should be string? </p>