Temporal types – datetime
The term temporal generally encompasses data types that concern themselves with dates and times, both in absolute terms as well as when measuring the duration between two different points in time. Temporal types are a key enabler for time-series-based analyses, which can be invaluable for trend detection and forecasting models. In fact, pandas was initially written at a capital management firm before being open sourced. Much of the time-series handling that was built into pandas has been influenced by real-world reporting needs from financial and economic industries.
While the Categorical types section started to show some inconsistencies in the pandas type system API, temporal types take things a bit further. It would be reasonable to expect pd.DatetimeDtype() to exist as a constructor, but that is unfortunately not the case, at least as of writing. Additionally, and as mentioned in the Missing value handling recipe, temporal types, which were...
