The problem is that these libs use nested tuples as keys.
For example, a pandas dataframe with a multi leveled index could key a row,col key such as (("a",1), "column") and worse, you could have a dataframe with a multi leveled columns too. Where a single cell is accessed a tuple containing two tuples.
Something like this
In [18]: df = pd.DataFrame(np.random.randn(3, 8), index=["A", "B", "C"], columns=index)
In [19]: df
Out[19]:
first bar baz ... foo qux
second one two one ... two one two
A 0.895717 0.805244 -1.206412 ... 1.340309 -1.170299 -0.226169
B 0.410835 0.813850 0.132003 ... -1.187678 1.130127 -1.436737
C -1.413681 1.607920 1.024180 ... -2.211372 0.974466 -2.006747
[3 rows x 8 columns]
In [20]: pd.DataFrame(np.random.randn(6, 6), index=index[:6], columns=index[:6])
Out[20]:
first bar baz foo
second one two one two one two
first second
bar one -0.410001 -0.078638 0.545952 -1.219217 -1.226825 0.769804
two -1.281247 -0.727707 -0.121306 -0.097883 0.695775 0.341734
baz one 0.959726 -1.110336 -0.619976 0.149748 -0.732339 0.687738
two 0.176444 0.403310 -0.154951 0.301624 -2.179861 -1.369849
foo one -0.954208 1.462696 -1.743161 -0.826591 -0.345352 1.314232
two 0.690579 0.995761 2.396780 0.014871 3.357427 -0.317441
Which is why pandas and numpy have their own helpers.