Pandas: Sorting columns by their mean value

You can use the mean DataFrame method and the Series sort_values method:

In [11]: df = pd.DataFrame(np.random.randn(4,4), columns=list('ABCD'))

In [12]: df
Out[12]:
          A         B         C         D
0  0.933069  1.432486  0.288637 -1.867853
1 -0.455952 -0.725268  0.339908  1.318175
2 -0.894331  0.573868  1.116137  0.508845
3  0.661572  0.819360 -0.527327 -0.925478

In [13]: df.mean()
Out[13]:
A    0.061089
B    0.525112
C    0.304339
D   -0.241578
dtype: float64

In [14]: df.mean().sort_values()
Out[14]:
D   -0.241578
A    0.061089
C    0.304339
B    0.525112
dtype: float64

Then you can reorder the columns using reindex:

In [15]: df.reindex(df.mean().sort_values().index, axis=1)
Out[15]:
          D         A         C         B
0 -1.867853  0.933069  0.288637  1.432486
1  1.318175 -0.455952  0.339908 -0.725268
2  0.508845 -0.894331  1.116137  0.573868
3 -0.925478  0.661572 -0.527327  0.819360

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Note: In earlier versions of pandas, sort_values used to be order, but order was deprecated as part of 0.17 so to be more consistent with the other sorting methods. Also, in earlier versions, one had to use reindex_axis rather than reindex.

You can use assign to create a variable, use it to sort values and drop it in the same line of code.

df = pd.DataFrame(np.random.randn(4,4), columns=list('ABCD'))
df.assign(m=df.mean(axis=1)).sort_values('m').drop('m', axis=1)