Pandas sort by group aggregate and column

Groupby A:

In [0]: grp = df.groupby('A')

Within each group, sum over B and broadcast the values using transform. Then sort by B:

In [1]: grp[['B']].transform(sum).sort('B')
Out[1]:
          B
2 -2.829710
5 -2.829710
1  0.253651
4  0.253651
0  0.551377
3  0.551377

Index the original df by passing the index from above. This will re-order the A values by the aggregate sum of the B values:

In [2]: sort1 = df.ix[grp[['B']].transform(sum).sort('B').index]

In [3]: sort1
Out[3]:
     A         B      C
2  baz -0.528172  False
5  baz -2.301539   True
1  bar -0.611756   True
4  bar  0.865408  False
0  foo  1.624345  False
3  foo -1.072969   True

Finally, sort the ‘C’ values within groups of ‘A’ using the sort=False option to preserve the A sort order from step 1:

In [4]: f = lambda x: x.sort('C', ascending=False)

In [5]: sort2 = sort1.groupby('A', sort=False).apply(f)

In [6]: sort2
Out[6]:
         A         B      C
A
baz 5  baz -2.301539   True
    2  baz -0.528172  False
bar 1  bar -0.611756   True
    4  bar  0.865408  False
foo 3  foo -1.072969   True
    0  foo  1.624345  False

Clean up the df index by using reset_index with drop=True:

In [7]: sort2.reset_index(0, drop=True)
Out[7]:
     A         B      C
5  baz -2.301539   True
2  baz -0.528172  False
1  bar -0.611756   True
4  bar  0.865408  False
3  foo -1.072969   True
0  foo  1.624345  False