fifth largest element in pandas code example

Example 1: nlargest

>>> df.nlargest(3, 'population')
        population      GDP alpha-2
France    65000000  2583560      FR
Italy     59000000  1937894      IT
Malta       434000    12011      MT

Example 2: nlargest hierarchy series pandas

print (grouped.groupby(level='yearmonth').nlargest(3).reset_index(level=0, drop=True))
yearmonth  product
201601     E          180
           A          100
           B           90
201602     F          220
           A          200
           C          120
201603     B          120
           C          110
           D          110
Name: val, dtype: int64