I am working with a pandas DataFrame and trying to sort a numeric column (trip_distance) in descending order.

However, I receive a NameError: name 'trip_distance' is not defined when using:

trip = sorted(trip_distance)
print(trip)

The column exists inside my DataFrame (e.g., df).

I would like clarity on:

• Why this NameError occurs

• The correct way to sort a DataFrame column in descending order

• When to use sorted() versus DataFrame.sort_values()

Any guidance on best practices for sorting columns in pandas would be appreciated.