pandas.Series.nlargest¶

Series.nlargest(self, n=5, keep='first') → 'Series'[source]¶

Return the largest n elements.

Parameters

nint, default 5

Return this many descending sorted values.

keep{‘first’, ‘last’, ‘all’}, default ‘first’

When there are duplicate values that cannot all fit in a Series of n elements:

firstreturn the first n occurrences in order
of appearance.
lastreturn the last n occurrences in reverse
order of appearance.
allkeep all occurrences. This can result in a Series of
size larger than n.

Returns

Series: The n largest values in the Series, sorted in decreasing order.

See also

Series.nsmallest: Get the n smallest elements.
Series.sort_values: Sort Series by values.
Series.head: Return the first n rows.

Notes

Faster than .sort_values(ascending=False).head(n) for small n relative to the size of the Series object.

Examples

>>> countries_population = {"Italy": 59000000, "France": 65000000,
...                         "Malta": 434000, "Maldives": 434000,
...                         "Brunei": 434000, "Iceland": 337000,
...                         "Nauru": 11300, "Tuvalu": 11300,
...                         "Anguilla": 11300, "Monserat": 5200}
>>> s = pd.Series(countries_population)
>>> s
Italy       59000000
France      65000000
Malta         434000
Maldives      434000
Brunei        434000
Iceland       337000
Nauru          11300
Tuvalu         11300
Anguilla       11300
Monserat        5200
dtype: int64

The n largest elements where n=5 by default.

>>> s.nlargest()
France      65000000
Italy       59000000
Malta         434000
Maldives      434000
Brunei        434000
dtype: int64

The n largest elements where n=3. Default keep value is ‘first’ so Malta will be kept.

>>> s.nlargest(3)
France    65000000
Italy     59000000
Malta       434000
dtype: int64

The n largest elements where n=3 and keeping the last duplicates. Brunei will be kept since it is the last with value 434000 based on the index order.

>>> s.nlargest(3, keep='last')
France      65000000
Italy       59000000
Brunei        434000
dtype: int64

The n largest elements where n=3 with all duplicates kept. Note that the returned Series has five elements due to the three duplicates.

>>> s.nlargest(3, keep='all')
France      65000000
Italy       59000000
Malta         434000
Maldives      434000
Brunei        434000
dtype: int64