In [1]: sp = pd.SparseDataFrame([1, 2, 3]) In [2]: np.cumsum(sp) ValueError: No axis named None for object type <class 'pandas.sparse.frame.SparseDataFrame'> In [3]: np.cumsum(sp, axis=0) Out[3]: 0 0 1.0 1 3.0 2 6.0 In [4]: np.cumsum(sp, axis=1) Out[4]: 0 0 1.0 1 2.0 2 3.0