Exploring plot types

We have looked at how to create simple line plots so far. The matplotlib library supports many more plot types that are useful for data visualization. However, our goal is to provide the basic knowledge that will help you to understand and use the library for visualizing data in the most common situations. Therefore, we will only focus on four kinds of plot types: scatter plots, bar plots, contour plots, and histograms.

Scatter plots

A scatter plot is used to visualize the relationship between variables measured in the same dataset. It is easy to plot a simple scatter plot, using the plt.scatter() function, that requires numeric columns for both the x and y axis:

Let's take a look at the command for the preceding output:

>>> X = np.random.normal(0, 1, 1000)
>>> Y = np.random.normal(0, 1, 1000)
>>> plt.scatter(X, Y, c = ['b', 'g', 'k', 'r', 'c'])
>>> plt.show()

Bar plots

A bar plot is used to present grouped data with rectangular bars, which can be either vertical or horizontal, with the lengths of the bars corresponding to their values. We use the plt.bar() command to visualize a vertical bar, and the plt.barh() command for the other:

The command for the preceding output is as follows:

>>> X = np.arange(5)
>>> Y = 3.14 + 2.71 * np.random.rand(5)
>>> plt.subplots(2)
>>> # the first subplot
>>> plt.subplot(211)
>>> plt.bar(X, Y, align='center', alpha=0.4, color='y')
>>> plt.xlabel('x')
>>> plt.ylabel('y')
>>> plt.title('bar plot in vertical')
>>> # the second subplot
>>> plt.subplot(212)
>>> plt.barh(X, Y, align='center', alpha=0.4, color='c')
>>> plt.xlabel('x')
>>> plt.ylabel('y')
>>> plt.title('bar plot in horizontal')
>>> plt.show()

Contour plots

We use contour plots to present the relationship between three numeric variables in two dimensions. Two variables are drawn along the x and y axes, and the third variable, z, is used for contour levels that are plotted as curves in different colors:

>>> x = np.linspace(-1, 1, 255)
>>> y = np.linspace(-2, 2, 300)
>>> z = np.sin(y[:, np.newaxis]) * np.cos(x)
>>> plt.contour(x, y, z, 255, linewidth=2)
>>> plt.show()

Let's take a look at the contour plot in the following image:

Tip

If we want to draw contour lines and filled contours, we can use the plt.contourf() method instead of plt.contour(). In contrast to MATLAB, matplotlib's contourf() will not draw the polygon edges.

Histogram plots

A histogram represents the distribution of numerical data graphically. Usually, the range of values is partitioned into bins of equal size, with the height of each bin corresponding to the frequency of values within that bin:

The command for the preceding output is as follows:

>>> mu, sigma = 100, 25
>>> fig, (ax0, ax1) = plt.subplots(ncols=2)
>>> x = mu + sigma * np.random.randn(1000)
>>> ax0.hist(x,20, normed=1, histtype='stepfilled', 
 facecolor='g', alpha=0.75)
>>> ax0.set_title('Stepfilled histogram')
>>> ax1.hist(x, bins=[100,150, 165, 170, 195] normed=1, 
 histtype='bar', rwidth=0.8)
>>> ax1.set_title('uniquel bins histogram')
>>> # automatically adjust subplot parameters to give specified padding
>>> plt.tight_layout()
>>> plt.show()