Databricks Exam Databricks-Machine-Learning-Associate Topic 2 Question 29 Discussion

Vectorized pandas UDFs, also known as Pandas UDFs, are a powerful feature in PySpark that allows for more efficient operations than standard UDFs. They operate by processing data in batches, utilizing vectorized operations that leverage pandas to perform operations on whole batches of data at once. This approach is much more efficient than processing data row by row as is typical with standard PySpark UDFs, which can significantly speed up the computation.

Reference

PySpark Documentation on UDFs: https://spark.apache.org/docs/latest/api/python/user_guide/sql/arrow_pandas.html#pandas-udfs-a-k-a-vectorized-udfs