Return the indices that would sort the Categorical. Missing values are sorted at the end. Parameters ---------- ascending : bool, default True Whether the indices should result in an ascending or descending sort. kind : {'quicksort', 'mergesort', 'heapsort', 'stable'}, optional Sorting algorithm. **kwargs: passed through to :func:`numpy.argsort`. Returns ------- np.ndarray[np.intp] See Also -------- numpy.ndarray.argsort Notes ----- While an ordering is applied to the category values, arg-sorting in this context refers more to organizing and grouping together based on matching category values. Thus, this function can be called on an unordered Categorical instance unlike the functions 'Categorical.min' and 'Categorical.max'. Examples -------- >>> pd.Categorical(['b', 'b', 'a', 'c']).argsort() array([2, 0, 1, 3]) >>> cat = pd.Categorical(['b', 'b', 'a', 'c'], ... categories=['c', 'b', 'a'], ... ordered=True) >>> cat.argsort() array([3, 0, 1, 2]) Missing values are placed at the end >>> cat = pd.Categorical([2, None, 1]) >>> cat.argsort() array([2, 0, 1]) r.