@yarikoptic just an FYI you can compare versions *much* more easily with the `distutils.versions.LooseVersion` class:

```
In [8]: from distutils.version import LooseVersion

In [9]: np.__version__ == LooseVersion('1.6.1')
Out[9]: True

In [10]: np.__version__ == LooseVersion('1.6')
Out[10]: False

In [11]: np.__version__ >= LooseVersion('1.6')
Out[11]: True
```

I'm also -1 on different versions of things for different tests, although i do something kind of like this for `read_html` (basically if bs4 version is 4.2.0 then i raise, but that's only tested in one place and i skip tests otherwise)

it would be ideal to have all of our tests support a single minimum version