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

Sorting by values

📖 Scenario: You work in a small bookstore. You have a list of books with their sales numbers. You want to find out which books sold the most and which sold the least.

🎯 Goal: You will create a pandas DataFrame with book sales data, then sort the books by their sales numbers to see the best and worst sellers.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a pandas DataFrame with book titles and their sales numbers

Create a variable to decide sorting order

Sort the DataFrame by sales numbers using the sorting order variable

Print the sorted DataFrame

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Sorting data by values is common in sales reports, rankings, and any list where order matters.

💼 Career

Data analysts and scientists often sort data to find top performers or trends quickly.

1

Create the book sales DataFrame

Import pandas as pd. Create a DataFrame called book_sales with two columns: 'Book' and 'Sales'. Use these exact entries: 'The Alchemist' with 150, '1984' with 200, 'The Catcher in the Rye' with 120, 'To Kill a Mockingbird' with 180, and 'Moby Dick' with 90.

Pandas

# Import pandas and create the DataFrame book_sales with the given data
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use pd.DataFrame with a dictionary containing the book names and sales numbers.

2

Set the sorting order

Create a variable called ascending_order and set it to False to sort from highest to lowest sales.

Pandas

import pandas as pd

book_sales = pd.DataFrame({
    'Book': ['The Alchemist', '1984', 'The Catcher in the Rye', 'To Kill a Mockingbird', 'Moby Dick'],
    'Sales': [150, 200, 120, 180, 90]
})

# Create the variable ascending_order and set it to False
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Set ascending_order to False to sort from highest to lowest.

3

Sort the DataFrame by sales

Create a new DataFrame called sorted_sales by sorting book_sales by the 'Sales' column using the ascending_order variable.

Pandas

import pandas as pd

book_sales = pd.DataFrame({
    'Book': ['The Alchemist', '1984', 'The Catcher in the Rye', 'To Kill a Mockingbird', 'Moby Dick'],
    'Sales': [150, 200, 120, 180, 90]
})

ascending_order = False

# Sort book_sales by 'Sales' using ascending_order and save to sorted_sales
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use book_sales.sort_values(by='Sales', ascending=ascending_order) to sort.

4

Print the sorted DataFrame

Print the sorted_sales DataFrame to see the books sorted by sales.

Pandas

import pandas as pd

book_sales = pd.DataFrame({
    'Book': ['The Alchemist', '1984', 'The Catcher in the Rye', 'To Kill a Mockingbird', 'Moby Dick'],
    'Sales': [150, 200, 120, 180, 90]
})

ascending_order = False

sorted_sales = book_sales.sort_values(by='Sales', ascending=ascending_order)

# Print the sorted_sales DataFrame
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use print(sorted_sales) to show the sorted DataFrame.