Sorting by index in Pandas - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Sorting DataFrames by Index with pandas

📖 Scenario: You work in a small bookstore. You have a list of books with their prices stored in a table. You want to organize this list by the book titles to find books quickly.

🎯 Goal: Build a pandas DataFrame with book titles as the index and prices as the values. Then sort the DataFrame by its index (book titles) in ascending order.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a pandas DataFrame called books with the given data and set the book titles as the index.

Create a variable called sorted_books that stores the DataFrame sorted by its index in ascending order.

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Sorting data by index helps organize and quickly find information in tables, like sorting books by title in a bookstore inventory.

💼 Career

Data analysts and database managers often sort data by index or keys to improve data retrieval and reporting.

1

Create the books DataFrame with index

Import pandas as pd. Create a DataFrame called books with these entries: titles 'Python Basics', 'Data Science 101', 'Machine Learning', and prices 25, 40, 55 respectively. Set the book titles as the index of the DataFrame.

Pandas

# Import pandas and create the DataFrame with book titles as index
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use pd.DataFrame with a dictionary for prices and set index to the list of book titles.

2

Set sorting order variable

Create a variable called ascending_order and set it to True to indicate sorting in ascending order.

Pandas

import pandas as pd
books = pd.DataFrame({'Price': [25, 40, 55]}, index=['Python Basics', 'Data Science 101', 'Machine Learning'])
# Create a variable ascending_order and set it to True
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Just assign True to the variable ascending_order.

3

Sort the DataFrame by index

Create a new DataFrame called sorted_books by sorting books by its index in ascending order using the variable ascending_order.

Pandas

import pandas as pd
books = pd.DataFrame({'Price': [25, 40, 55]}, index=['Python Basics', 'Data Science 101', 'Machine Learning'])
ascending_order = True
# Sort books by index using ascending_order and assign to sorted_books
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use books.sort_index(ascending=ascending_order) to sort by index.

4

Complete the sorting project

Ensure the variable sorted_books contains the DataFrame sorted by index in ascending order. This completes the sorting by index task.

Pandas

import pandas as pd
books = pd.DataFrame({'Price': [25, 40, 55]}, index=['Python Basics', 'Data Science 101', 'Machine Learning'])
ascending_order = True
sorted_books = books.sort_index(ascending=ascending_order)
# Final step: confirm sorted_books is ready
# Your code here

Need a hint?

No extra code needed here. Just confirm the sorting is done.