@ DYZ's comment motivated me to solve this problem

x_train64=[]        
for (index, thing) in enumerate(X_train):
    if index < len(X_train):
        current, next_ = thing, X_train[index]
        current_list64=[np.float64(current) for current in current]
        x_train64.append(current_list64)
        if len(X_train)== index:
            print('end of X_train')
            break

You can convert most of the columns by just calling convert_objects:

In [36]:

df = df.convert_objects(convert_numeric=True)
df.dtypes
Out[36]:
Date         object
WD            int64
Manpower    float64
2nd          object
CTR          object
2ndU        float64
T1            int64
T2          int64
T3           int64
T4        float64
dtype: object

For column '2nd' and 'CTR' we can call the vectorised str methods to replace the thousands separator and remove the '%' sign and then astype to convert:

In [39]:

df['2nd'] = df['2nd'].str.replace(',','').astype(int)
df['CTR'] = df['CTR'].str.replace('%','').astype(np.float64)
df.dtypes
Out[39]:
Date         object
WD            int64
Manpower    float64
2nd           int32
CTR         float64
2ndU        float64
T1            int64
T2            int64
T3            int64
T4           object
dtype: object
In [40]:

df.head()
Out[40]:
        Date  WD  Manpower   2nd   CTR  2ndU   T1  　　T2   T3     T4
0   2013/4/6   6       NaN  2645  5.27  0.29  407   533  454    368
1   2013/4/7   7       NaN  2118  5.89  0.31  257   659  583    369
2  2013/4/13   6       NaN  2470  5.38  0.29  354   531  473  　　383
3  2013/4/14   7       NaN  2033  6.77  0.37  396   748  681    458
4  2013/4/20   6       NaN  2690  5.38  0.29  361   528  541    381

Or you can do the string handling operations above without the call to astype and then call convert_objects to convert everything in one go.

UPDATE

Since version 0.17.0 convert_objects is deprecated and there isn't a top-level function to do this so you need to do:

df.apply(lambda col:pd.to_numeric(col, errors='coerce'))

See the docs and this related question: pandas: to_numeric for multiple columns

Yes, actually when you use Python's native float to specify the dtype for an array , numpy converts it to float64. As given in documentation -

Note that, above, we use the Python float object as a dtype. NumPy knows that int refers to np.int_, bool means np.bool_ , that float is np.float_ and complex is np.complex_. The other data-types do not have Python equivalents.

And -

float_ - Shorthand for float64.

This is why even though you use float to convert the whole array to float , it still uses np.float64.

According to the requirement from the other question , the best solution would be converting to normal float object after taking each scalar value as -

float(new_array[0])

A solution that I could think of is to create a subclass for float and use that for casting (though to me it looks bad). But I would prefer the previous solution over this if possible. Example -

In [20]: import numpy as np

In [21]: na = np.array([1., 2., 3.])

In [22]: na = np.array([1., 2., 3., np.inf, np.inf])

In [23]: type(na[-1])
Out[23]: numpy.float64

In [24]: na[-1] - na[-2]
C:\Anaconda3\Scripts\ipython-script.py:1: RuntimeWarning: invalid value encountered in double_scalars
  if __name__ == '__main__':
Out[24]: nan

In [25]: class x(float):
   ....:     pass
   ....:

In [26]: na_new = na.astype(x)


In [28]: type(na_new[-1])
Out[28]: float                           #No idea why its showing float, I would have thought it would show '__main__.x' .

In [29]: na_new[-1] - na_new[-2]
Out[29]: nan

In [30]: na_new
Out[30]: array([1.0, 2.0, 3.0, inf, inf], dtype=object)

The problem is that you do not do any type conversion of the numpy array. You calculate a float32 variable and put it as an entry into a float64 numpy array. numpy then converts it properly back to float64

Try someting like this:

a = np.zeros(4,dtype="float64") 
print a.dtype
print type(a[0])
a = np.float32(a)
print a.dtype
print type(a[0])

The output (tested with python 2.7)

float64
<type 'numpy.float64'>
float32
<type 'numpy.float32'>

a is in your case the array tree.tree_.threshold

Use val.item() to convert most NumPy values to a native Python type:

import numpy as np

# for example, numpy.float32 -> python float
val = np.float32(0)
pyval = val.item()
print(type(pyval))         # <class 'float'>

# and similar...
type(np.float64(0).item()) # <class 'float'>
type(np.uint32(0).item())  # <class 'int'>
type(np.int16(0).item())   # <class 'int'>
type(np.cfloat(0).item())  # <class 'complex'>
type(np.datetime64(0, 'D').item())  # <class 'datetime.date'>
type(np.datetime64('2001-01-01 00:00:00').item())  # <class 'datetime.datetime'>
type(np.timedelta64(0, 'D').item()) # <class 'datetime.timedelta'>
...

(A related method np.asscalar(val) was deprecated with 1.16, and removed with 1.23).

For the curious, to build a table of conversions of NumPy array scalars for your system:

for name in dir(np):
    obj = getattr(np, name)
    if hasattr(obj, 'dtype'):
        try:
            if 'time' in name:
                npn = obj(0, 'D')
            else:
                npn = obj(0)
            nat = npn.item()
            print('{0} ({1!r}) -> {2}'.format(name, npn.dtype.char, type(nat)))
        except:
            pass

There are a few NumPy types that have no native Python equivalent on some systems, including: clongdouble, clongfloat, complex192, complex256, float128, longcomplex, longdouble and longfloat. These need to be converted to their nearest NumPy equivalent before using .item().

The tolist() method should do what you want. If you have a numpy array, just call tolist():

In [17]: a
Out[17]: 
array([ 0.        ,  0.14285714,  0.28571429,  0.42857143,  0.57142857,
        0.71428571,  0.85714286,  1.        ,  1.14285714,  1.28571429,
        1.42857143,  1.57142857,  1.71428571,  1.85714286,  2.        ])

In [18]: a.dtype
Out[18]: dtype('float64')

In [19]: b = a.tolist()

In [20]: b
Out[20]: 
[0.0,
 0.14285714285714285,
 0.2857142857142857,
 0.42857142857142855,
 0.5714285714285714,
 0.7142857142857142,
 0.8571428571428571,
 1.0,
 1.1428571428571428,
 1.2857142857142856,
 1.4285714285714284,
 1.5714285714285714,
 1.7142857142857142,
 1.857142857142857,
 2.0]

In [21]: type(b)
Out[21]: list

In [22]: type(b[0])
Out[22]: float

If, in fact, you really have python list of numpy.float64 objects, then @Alexander's answer is great, or you could convert the list to an array and then use the tolist() method. E.g.

In [46]: c
Out[46]: 
[0.0,
 0.33333333333333331,
 0.66666666666666663,
 1.0,
 1.3333333333333333,
 1.6666666666666665,
 2.0]

In [47]: type(c)
Out[47]: list

In [48]: type(c[0])
Out[48]: numpy.float64

@Alexander's suggestion, a list comprehension:

In [49]: [float(v) for v in c]
Out[49]: 
[0.0,
 0.3333333333333333,
 0.6666666666666666,
 1.0,
 1.3333333333333333,
 1.6666666666666665,
 2.0]

Or, convert to an array and then use the tolist() method.

In [50]: np.array(c).tolist()
Out[50]: 
[0.0,
 0.3333333333333333,
 0.6666666666666666,
 1.0,
 1.3333333333333333,
 1.6666666666666665,
 2.0]

If you are concerned with the speed, here's a comparison. The input, x, is a python list of numpy.float64 objects:

In [8]: type(x)
Out[8]: list

In [9]: len(x)
Out[9]: 1000

In [10]: type(x[0])
Out[10]: numpy.float64

Timing for the list comprehension:

In [11]: %timeit list1 = [float(v) for v in x]
10000 loops, best of 3: 109 µs per loop

Timing for conversion to numpy array and then tolist():

In [12]: %timeit list2 = np.array(x).tolist()
10000 loops, best of 3: 70.5 µs per loop

So it is faster to convert the list to an array and then call tolist().