Jupyter memory usage: Why del doesn’t free your DataFrame

Python Jupyter memory quirk: Deleting variables doesn’t always free memory!

# cell 1
df = [YOUR BIG DATAFRAME]
df  # View it + stores in Out[1]
# cell 2
del(df)  # df deleted, but Out[1] still has it!

Use df.head() instead of df to keep big values out of Jupyter’s Out dict.