title: Converting a list in a dict to a Series
body: <p>I'm trying to read lines from an HTML input file and prepare Series / DataFrames so I can eventually create graphs. I'm using lxml's objectify to take lines of HTML data and convert them to a list. Whenever I try to take the list data and make a Series or DataFrame, I get a Series (or DataFrame) containing a number of elements equal to the number of items in my list, but the data for the elements is my list itself.</p>
  
  <p>The easiest way I can show my problem is:</p>
  
  <pre><code>from lxml import etree
  from lxml import objectify
  from pandas import Series
  line='&lt;tr class="alt"&gt;&lt;td&gt;192.168.1.0&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;XXDHCP&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Y&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;255&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;0&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;YYDHCP&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Y&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;250&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;0&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;0%&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;505&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;505&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;0&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;'
  htmldata=(objectify.fromstring(line)).getchildren()
  htmlseries=Series(htmldata)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>htmlseries ends up looking like:</p>
  
  <pre><code>0     [[[192.168.1.0, XXDHCP, Y, 255, 0, YYDHCP, Y, ...
  1     [[[192.168.1.0, XXDHCP, Y, 255, 0, YYDHCP, Y, ...
  2     [[[192.168.1.0, XXDHCP, Y, 255, 0, YYDHCP, Y, ...
  3     [[[192.168.1.0, XXDHCP, Y, 255, 0, YYDHCP, Y, ...
  4     [[[192.168.1.0, XXDHCP, Y, 255, 0, YYDHCP, Y, ...
  5     [[[192.168.1.0, XXDHCP, Y, 255, 0, YYDHCP, Y, ...
  6     [[[192.168.1.0, XXDHCP, Y, 255, 0, YYDHCP, Y, ...
  7     [[[192.168.1.0, XXDHCP, Y, 255, 0, YYDHCP, Y, ...
  8     [[[192.168.1.0, XXDHCP, Y, 255, 0, YYDHCP, Y, ...
  9     [[[192.168.1.0, XXDHCP, Y, 255, 0, YYDHCP, Y, ...
  10    [[[192.168.1.0, XXDHCP, Y, 255, 0, YYDHCP, Y, ...
  11    [[[192.168.1.0, XXDHCP, Y, 255, 0, YYDHCP, Y, ...
  12    [[[192.168.1.0, XXDHCP, Y, 255, 0, YYDHCP, Y, ...
  13    [[[192.168.1.0, XXDHCP, Y, 255, 0, YYDHCP, Y, ...
  </code></pre>
  
  <p><code>type(htmldata[0])</code> is: <code>lxml.objectify.StringElement</code><br>
  <code>type(htmldata[3])</code> is: <code>lxml.objectify.IntElement</code></p>
  
  <p>While I'm looking for something like:</p>
  
  <pre><code>0     192.168.1.0
  1          XXDHCP
  2               Y
  3             255
  4               0
  5          YYDHCP
  6               Y
  7             250
  8               0
  9              0%
  10            505
  11            505
  12              0
  13               
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>What am I doing wrong? I'm kind of mystified as to what's going on. When I try reading each column into a list:</p>
  
  <pre><code>data=objectify.fromstring(line).getchildren()
  labdata[ip]['Scope'].append(data[0])
  labdata[ip]['Cluster1'].append(data[1])
  labdata[ip]['Active1'].append(data[2])
  ...etc...
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>My list ends up looking like:</p>
  
  <pre><code>labdata['192.168.1.0']['Utilization']
  ['100%',
   '96%',
   '96%',
   '90%',
   '81%',
   '96%',
   '90%',
   '97%',
   '98%',
   '92%',
   '99%',
   ...etc...
   ]
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>But for some reason:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Series(labdata['192.168.1.0']['Utilization'])
  0     [[[192.168.1.0, XXDHCP, Y, 0, 383, YYDHCP, Y...
  1     [[[192.168.1.0, XXDHCP, Y, 28, 355, YYDHCP, ...
  2     [[[192.168.1.0, XXDHCP, Y, 28, 355, YYDHCP, ...
  3     [[[192.168.1.0, XXDHCP, Y, 76, 307, YYDHCP, ...
  4     [[[192.168.1.0, XXDHCP, Y, 104, 279, YYDHCP,...
  5     [[[192.168.1.0, XXDHCP, Y, 27, 356, YYDHCP, ...
  6     [[[192.168.1.0, XXDHCP, Y, 66, 317, YYDHCP, ...
  7     [[[192.168.1.0, XXDHCP, Y, 15, 368, YYDHCP, ...
  8     [[[192.168.1.0, XXDHCP, Y, 15, 368, YYDHCP, ...
  9     [[[192.168.1.0, XXDHCP, Y, 54, 329, YYDHCP, ...
  ...etc...
  </code></pre>
  
  <p><code>type(labdata['192.168.1.0']['Utilization'][0])</code> is <code>lxml.objectify.StringElement</code></p>
  
  <p>Do I need to cast these elements to normal strings and ints?</p>