Answer by ayhan for DataFrame sorting based on a function of multiple column values

You can create a temporary column to use in sort and then drop it:

df.assign(f = df['one']**2 + df['two']**2).sort_values('f').drop('f', axis=1)Out:   letter  one  two2      b    1    33      b    4    21      a    3    44      c    5    10      a    2    5