pandas.Series.nsmallest¶

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

Return the smallest n elements.

Parameters

nint, default 5

Return this many ascending 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 smallest values in the Series, sorted in increasing order.

See also

Series.nlargest: Get the n largest elements.
Series.sort_values: Sort Series by values.
Series.head: Return the first n rows.

Notes

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

Examples

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

The n smallest elements where n=5 by default.

>>> s.nsmallest()
Monserat      5200
Nauru        11300
Tuvalu       11300
Anguilla     11300
Iceland     337000
dtype: int64

The n smallest elements where n=3. Default keep value is ‘first’ so Nauru and Tuvalu will be kept.

>>> s.nsmallest(3)
Monserat     5200
Nauru       11300
Tuvalu      11300
dtype: int64

The n smallest elements where n=3 and keeping the last duplicates. Anguilla and Tuvalu will be kept since they are the last with value 11300 based on the index order.

>>> s.nsmallest(3, keep='last')
Monserat     5200
Anguilla    11300
Tuvalu      11300
dtype: int64

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

>>> s.nsmallest(3, keep='all')
Monserat     5200
Nauru       11300
Tuvalu      11300
Anguilla    11300
dtype: int64