DOC: Added refs to basics.dtypes and basics.object_conversion, added whatsnew entry

Author: wcwagner

doc/source/basics.rst

@@ -1751,6 +1751,8 @@ Convert a subset of columns to a specified type using :meth:`~DataFrame.astype`
        dft.loc[:, ['a', 'b']] = dft.loc[:, ['a', 'b']].astype(np.uint8)
        dft.dtypes
 
+.. _basics.object_conversion:
+
 object conversion
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 

doc/source/io.rst

@@ -436,7 +436,13 @@ individual columns:
     df.dtypes
 
 Fortunately, ``pandas`` offers more than one way to ensure that your column(s)
-contain only one ``dtype``. For instance, you can use the ``converters`` argument
+contain only one ``dtype``. If you're unfamiliar with these concepts, you can
+see :ref:`here<basics.dtypes>` to learn more about dtypes, and
+:ref:`here<basics.object_conversion>` to learn more about ``object`` conversion in
+``pandas``.
+
+
+For instance, you can use the ``converters`` argument
 of :func:`~pandas.read_csv`:
 
 .. ipython:: python

doc/source/whatsnew/v0.19.0.txt

@@ -323,6 +323,8 @@ Other enhancements
                        index=['row1', 'row2'])
      df.sort_values(by='row2', axis=1)
 
+- Added documentation to :ref:`I/O<io.dtypes>` regarding the perils of reading in columns with mixed dtypes and how to handle it (:issue:`13746`)
+
 .. _whatsnew_0190.api: