How can I sort an array in NumPy by the nth column?
For example,
a = array([[9, 2, 3],
[4, 5, 6],
[7, 0, 5]])
In case someone wants to make use of sorting at a critical part of their programs here's a performance comparison for the different proposals:
import numpy as np
table = np.random.rand(5000, 10)
%timeit table.view('f8,f8,f8,f8,f8,f8,f8,f8,f8,f8').sort(order=['f9'], axis=0)
1000 loops, best of 3: 1.88 ms per loop
%timeit table[table[:,9].argsort()]
10000 loops, best of 3: 180 µs per loop
import pandas as pd
df = pd.DataFrame(table)
%timeit df.sort_values(9, ascending=True)
1000 loops, best of 3: 400 µs per loop
So, it looks like indexing with argsort is the quickest method so far...