Develop Reference

plotting area plot as a subplot [duplicate]

I have a few Pandas DataFrames sharing the same value scale, but having different columns and indices. When invoking df.plot(), I get separate plot images. what I really want is to have them all in the same plot as subplots, but I'm unfortunately failing to come up with a solution to how and would highly appreciate some help.

You can manually create the subplots with matplotlib, and then plot the dataframes on a specific subplot using the ax keyword. For example for 4 subplots (2x2):
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
fig, axes = plt.subplots(nrows=2, ncols=2)
df1.plot(ax=axes[0,0])
df2.plot(ax=axes[0,1])
...
Here axes is an array which holds the different subplot axes, and you can access one just by indexing axes.
If you want a shared x-axis, then you can provide sharex=True to plt.subplots.

You can see e.gs. in the documentation demonstrating joris answer. Also from the documentation, you could also set subplots=True and layout=(,) within the pandas plot function:
df.plot(subplots=True, layout=(1,2))
You could also use fig.add_subplot() which takes subplot grid parameters such as 221, 222, 223, 224, etc. as described in the post here. Nice examples of plot on pandas data frame, including subplots, can be seen in this ipython notebook.

You can plot multiple subplots of multiple pandas data frames using matplotlib with a simple trick of making a list of all data frame. Then using the for loop for plotting subplots.
Working code:
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import pandas as pd
import numpy as np
# dataframe sample data
df1 = pd.DataFrame(np.random.rand(10,2)*100, columns=['A', 'B'])
df2 = pd.DataFrame(np.random.rand(10,2)*100, columns=['A', 'B'])
df3 = pd.DataFrame(np.random.rand(10,2)*100, columns=['A', 'B'])
df4 = pd.DataFrame(np.random.rand(10,2)*100, columns=['A', 'B'])
df5 = pd.DataFrame(np.random.rand(10,2)*100, columns=['A', 'B'])
df6 = pd.DataFrame(np.random.rand(10,2)*100, columns=['A', 'B'])
#define number of rows and columns for subplots
nrow=3
ncol=2
# make a list of all dataframes
df_list = [df1 ,df2, df3, df4, df5, df6]
fig, axes = plt.subplots(nrow, ncol)
# plot counter
count=0
for r in range(nrow):
for c in range(ncol):
df_list[count].plot(ax=axes[r,c])
count+=1
Using this code you can plot subplots in any configuration. You need to define the number of rows nrow and the number of columns ncol. Also, you need to make list of data frames df_list which you wanted to plot.

You can use the familiar Matplotlib style calling a figure and subplot, but you simply need to specify the current axis using plt.gca(). An example:
plt.figure(1)
plt.subplot(2,2,1)
df.A.plot() #no need to specify for first axis
plt.subplot(2,2,2)
df.B.plot(ax=plt.gca())
plt.subplot(2,2,3)
df.C.plot(ax=plt.gca())
etc...

You can use this:
fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(221)
plt.plot(x,y)
ax = fig.add_subplot(222)
plt.plot(x,z)
...
plt.show()

You may not need to use Pandas at all. Here's a matplotlib plot of cat frequencies:
x = np.linspace(0, 2*np.pi, 400)
y = np.sin(x**2)
f, axes = plt.subplots(2, 1)
for c, i in enumerate(axes):
axes[c].plot(x, y)
axes[c].set_title('cats')
plt.tight_layout()

Option 1: Create subplots from a dictionary of dataframes with long (tidy) data
Assumptions:
There is a dictionary of multiple dataframes of tidy data that are either:
Created by reading in from files
Created by separating a single dataframe into multiple dataframes
The categories, cat, may be overlapping, but all dataframes don't necessarily contain all values of cat
hue='cat'
This example uses a dict of dataframes, but a list of dataframes would be similar.
If the dataframes are wide, use pandas.DataFrame.melt to convert them to long form.
Because dataframes are being iterated through, there's no guarantee that colors will be mapped the same for each plot
A custom color map needs to be created from the unique 'cat' values for all the dataframes
Since the colors will be the same, place one legend to the side of the plots, instead of a legend in every plot
Tested in python 3.10, pandas 1.4.3, matplotlib 3.5.1, seaborn 0.11.2
Imports and Test Data
import pandas as pd
import numpy as np # used for random data
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from matplotlib.patches import Patch # for custom legend - square patches
from matplotlib.lines import Line2D # for custom legend - round markers
import seaborn as sns
import math import ceil # determine correct number of subplot
# synthetic data
df_dict = dict()
for i in range(1, 7):
np.random.seed(i) # for repeatable sample data
data_length = 100
data = {'cat': np.random.choice(['A', 'B', 'C'], size=data_length),
'x': np.random.rand(data_length), 'y': np.random.rand(data_length)}
df_dict[i] = pd.DataFrame(data)
# display(df_dict[1].head())
cat x y
0 B 0.944595 0.606329
1 A 0.586555 0.568851
2 A 0.903402 0.317362
3 B 0.137475 0.988616
4 B 0.139276 0.579745
# display(df_dict[6].tail())
cat x y
95 B 0.881222 0.263168
96 A 0.193668 0.636758
97 A 0.824001 0.638832
98 C 0.323998 0.505060
99 C 0.693124 0.737582
Create color mappings and plot
# create color mapping based on all unique values of cat
unique_cat = {cat for v in df_dict.values() for cat in v.cat.unique()} # get unique cats
colors = sns.color_palette('tab10', n_colors=len(unique_cat)) # get a number of colors
cmap = dict(zip(unique_cat, colors)) # zip values to colors
col_nums = 3 # how many plots per row
row_nums = math.ceil(len(df_dict) / col_nums) # how many rows of plots
# create the figue and axes
fig, axes = plt.subplots(row_nums, col_nums, figsize=(9, 6), sharex=True, sharey=True)
# convert to 1D array for easy iteration
axes = axes.flat
# iterate through dictionary and plot
for ax, (k, v) in zip(axes, df_dict.items()):
sns.scatterplot(data=v, x='x', y='y', hue='cat', palette=cmap, ax=ax)
sns.despine(top=True, right=True)
ax.legend_.remove() # remove the individual plot legends
ax.set_title(f'dataset = {k}', fontsize=11)
fig.tight_layout()
# create legend from cmap
# patches = [Patch(color=v, label=k) for k, v in cmap.items()] # square patches
patches = [Line2D([0], [0], marker='o', color='w', markerfacecolor=v, label=k, markersize=8) for k, v in cmap.items()] # round markers
# place legend outside of plot; change the right bbox value to move the legend up or down
plt.legend(title='cat', handles=patches, bbox_to_anchor=(1.06, 1.2), loc='center left', borderaxespad=0, frameon=False)
plt.show()
Option 2: Create subplots from a single dataframe with multiple separate datasets
The dataframes must be in a long form with the same column names.
This option uses pd.concat to combine multiple dataframes into a single dataframe, and .assign to add a new column.
See Import multiple csv files into pandas and concatenate into one DataFrame for creating a single dataframes from a list of files.
This option is easier because it doesn't require manually mapping colors to 'cat'
Combine DataFrames
# using df_dict, with dataframes as values, from the top
# combine all the dataframes in df_dict to a single dataframe with an identifier column
df = pd.concat((v.assign(dataset=k) for k, v in df_dict.items()), ignore_index=True)
# display(df.head())
cat x y dataset
0 B 0.944595 0.606329 1
1 A 0.586555 0.568851 1
2 A 0.903402 0.317362 1
3 B 0.137475 0.988616 1
4 B 0.139276 0.579745 1
# display(df.tail())
cat x y dataset
595 B 0.881222 0.263168 6
596 A 0.193668 0.636758 6
597 A 0.824001 0.638832 6
598 C 0.323998 0.505060 6
599 C 0.693124 0.737582 6
Plot a FacetGrid with seaborn.relplot
sns.relplot(kind='scatter', data=df, x='x', y='y', hue='cat', col='dataset', col_wrap=3, height=3)
Both options create the same result, however, it's less complicated to combine all the dataframes, and plot a figure-level plot with sns.relplot.

Building on #joris response above, if you have already established a reference to the subplot, you can use the reference as well. For example,
ax1 = plt.subplot2grid((50,100), (0, 0), colspan=20, rowspan=10)
...
df.plot.barh(ax=ax1, stacked=True)

Here is a working pandas subplot example, where modes is the column names of the dataframe.
dpi=200
figure_size=(20, 10)
fig, ax = plt.subplots(len(modes), 1, sharex="all", sharey="all", dpi=dpi)
for i in range(len(modes)):
ax[i] = pivot_df.loc[:, modes[i]].plot.bar(figsize=(figure_size[0], figure_size[1]*len(modes)),
ax=ax[i], title=modes[i], color=my_colors[i])
ax[i].legend()
fig.suptitle(name)

import numpy as np
import pandas as pd
imoprt matplotlib.pyplot as plt
fig, ax = plt.subplots(2,2)
df = pd.DataFrame({'A':np.random.randint(1,100,10),
'B': np.random.randint(100,1000,10),
'C':np.random.randint(100,200,10)})
for ax in ax.flatten():
df.plot(ax =ax)

How to extend a matplotlib axis if the ticks are labels and not numeric?

I have a number of charts, made with matplotlib and seaborn, that look like the example below.
I show how certain quantities evolve over time on a lineplot
The x-axis labels are not numbers but strings (e.g. 'Q1' or '2018 first half' etc)
I need to "extend" the x-axis to the right, with an empty period. The chart must show from Q1 to Q4, but there is no data for Q4 (the Q4 column is full of nans)
I need this because I need the charts to be side-by-side with others which do have data for Q4
matplotlib doesn't display the column full of nans
If the x-axis were numeric, it would be easy to extend the range of the plot; since it's not numeric, I don't know which x_range each tick corresponds to
I have found the solution below. It works, but it's not elegant: I use integers for the x-axis, add 1, then set the labels back to the strings. Is there a more elegant way?
This is the code:
import numpy as np
import pandas as pd
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib
from matplotlib.ticker import FuncFormatter
import seaborn as sns
df =pd.DataFrame()
df['period'] = ['Q1','Q2','Q3','Q4']
df['a'] = [3,4,5,np.nan]
df['b'] = [4,4,6,np.nan]
df = df.set_index( 'period')
fig, ax = plt.subplots(1,2)
sns.lineplot( data = df, ax =ax[0])
df_idx = df.index
df2 = df.set_index( np.arange(1, len(df_idx) + 1 ))
sns.lineplot(data = df2, ax = ax[1])
ax[1].set_xlim(1,4)
ax[1].set_xticklabels(df.index)

You can add these lines of code for ax[0]
left_buffer,right_buffer = 3,2
labels = ['Q1','Q2','Q3','Q4']
extanded_labels = ['']*left_buffer + labels + ['']*right_buffer
left_range = list(range(-left_buffer,0))
right_range = list(range(len(labels),len(labels)+right_buffer))
ticks_range = left_range + list(range(len(labels))) + right_range
aux_range = list(range(len(extanded_labels)))
ax[0].set_xticks(ticks_range)
ax[0].set_xticklabels(extanded_labels)
xticks = ax[0].xaxis.get_major_ticks()
for ind in aux_range[0:left_buffer]: xticks[ind].tick1line.set_visible(False)
for ind in aux_range[len(labels)+left_buffer:len(labels)+left_buffer+right_buffer]: xticks[ind].tick1line.set_visible(False)
in which left_buffer and right_buffer are margins you want to add to the left and to the right, respectively. Running the code, you will get

I may have actually found a simpler solution: I can draw a transparent line (alpha = 0 ) by plotting x = index of the dataframe, ie with all the labels, including those for which all values are nans, and y = the average value of the dataframe, so as to be sure it's within the range:
sns.lineplot(x = df.index, y = np.ones(df.shape[0]) * df.mean().mean() , ax = ax[0], alpha =0 )
This assumes the scale of the y a xis has not been changed manually; a better way of doing it would be to check whether it has:
y_centre = np.mean([ax[0].get_ylim()])
sns.lineplot(x = df.index, y = np.ones(df.shape[0]) * y_centre , ax = ax[0], alpha =0 )
Drawing a transparent line forces matplotlib to extend the axes so as to show all the x values, even those for which all the other values are nans.

How to plot multiple seaborn.distplot in a single figure

I want to plot multiple seaborn distplot under a same window, where each plot has the same x and y grid. My attempt is shown below, which does not work.
# function to plot the density curve of the 200 Median Stn. MC-losses
def make_density(stat_list,color, layer_num):
num_subplots = len(stat_list)
ncols = 3
nrows = (num_subplots + ncols - 1) // ncols
fig, axes = plt.subplots(ncols=ncols, nrows=nrows, figsize=(ncols * 6, nrows * 5))
for i in range(len(stat_list)):
# Plot formatting
plt.title('Layer ' + layer_num)
plt.xlabel('Median Stn. MC-Loss')
plt.ylabel('Density')
plt.xlim(-0.2,0.05)
plt.ylim(0, 85)
min_ylim, max_ylim = plt.ylim()
# Draw the density plot.
sns.distplot(stat_list, hist = True, kde = True,
kde_kws = {'linewidth': 2}, color=color)
# `stat_list` is a list of 6 lists
# I want to draw histogram and density plot of
# each of these 6 lists contained in `stat_list` in a single window,
# where each row containing the histograms and densities of the 3 plots
# so in my example, there would be 2 rows of 3 columns of plots (2 x 3 =6).
stat_list = [[0.3,0.5,0.7,0.3,0.5],[0.2,0.1,0.9,0.7,0.4],[0.9,0.8,0.7,0.6,0.5]
[0.2,0.6,0.75,0.87,0.91],[0.2,0.3,0.8,0.9,0.3],[0.2,0.3,0.8,0.87,0.92]]
How can I modify my function to draw multiple distplot under the same window, where the x and y grid for each displayed plot is identical?
Thank you,
PS: Aside, I want the 6 distplots to have identical color, preferably green for all of them.

The easiest method is to load the data into pandas and then use seaborn.displot.
.displot replaces .distplot in seaborn version 0.11.0
Technically, what you would have wanted before, is a FacetGrid mapped with distplot.
import pandas as pd
import seaborn as sns
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
# data
stat_list = [[0.3,0.5,0.7,0.3,0.5], [0.2,0.1,0.9,0.7,0.4], [0.9,0.8,0.7,0.6,0.5], [0.2,0.6,0.75,0.87,0.91], [0.2,0.3,0.8,0.9,0.3], [0.2,0.3,0.8,0.87,0.92]]
# load the data into pandas and then transpose it for the correct column data
df = pd.DataFrame(stat_list).T
# name the columns; specify a layer number
df.columns = ['A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E', 'F']
# now stack the data into a long (tidy) format
dfl = df.stack().reset_index(level=1).rename(columns={'level_1': 'Layer', 0: 'Median Stn. MC-Loss'})
# plot a displot
g = sns.displot(data=dfl, x='Median Stn. MC-Loss', col='Layer', col_wrap=3, kde=True, color='green')
g.set_axis_labels(y_var='Density')
g.set(xlim=(0, 1.0), ylim=(0, 3.0))
sns.FacetGrid and sns.distplot
.distplot is deprecated
p = sns.FacetGrid(data=dfl, col='Layer', col_wrap=3, height=5)
p.map(sns.distplot, 'Median Stn. MC-Loss', bins=5, kde=True, color='green')
p.set(xlim=(0, 1.0))

How to do kde plot in pyplot.subplots context? [duplicate]

I have a few Pandas DataFrames sharing the same value scale, but having different columns and indices. When invoking df.plot(), I get separate plot images. what I really want is to have them all in the same plot as subplots, but I'm unfortunately failing to come up with a solution to how and would highly appreciate some help.

You can manually create the subplots with matplotlib, and then plot the dataframes on a specific subplot using the ax keyword. For example for 4 subplots (2x2):
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
fig, axes = plt.subplots(nrows=2, ncols=2)
df1.plot(ax=axes[0,0])
df2.plot(ax=axes[0,1])
...
Here axes is an array which holds the different subplot axes, and you can access one just by indexing axes.
If you want a shared x-axis, then you can provide sharex=True to plt.subplots.

You can see e.gs. in the documentation demonstrating joris answer. Also from the documentation, you could also set subplots=True and layout=(,) within the pandas plot function:
df.plot(subplots=True, layout=(1,2))
You could also use fig.add_subplot() which takes subplot grid parameters such as 221, 222, 223, 224, etc. as described in the post here. Nice examples of plot on pandas data frame, including subplots, can be seen in this ipython notebook.

You can plot multiple subplots of multiple pandas data frames using matplotlib with a simple trick of making a list of all data frame. Then using the for loop for plotting subplots.
Working code:
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import pandas as pd
import numpy as np
# dataframe sample data
df1 = pd.DataFrame(np.random.rand(10,2)*100, columns=['A', 'B'])
df2 = pd.DataFrame(np.random.rand(10,2)*100, columns=['A', 'B'])
df3 = pd.DataFrame(np.random.rand(10,2)*100, columns=['A', 'B'])
df4 = pd.DataFrame(np.random.rand(10,2)*100, columns=['A', 'B'])
df5 = pd.DataFrame(np.random.rand(10,2)*100, columns=['A', 'B'])
df6 = pd.DataFrame(np.random.rand(10,2)*100, columns=['A', 'B'])
#define number of rows and columns for subplots
nrow=3
ncol=2
# make a list of all dataframes
df_list = [df1 ,df2, df3, df4, df5, df6]
fig, axes = plt.subplots(nrow, ncol)
# plot counter
count=0
for r in range(nrow):
for c in range(ncol):
df_list[count].plot(ax=axes[r,c])
count+=1
Using this code you can plot subplots in any configuration. You need to define the number of rows nrow and the number of columns ncol. Also, you need to make list of data frames df_list which you wanted to plot.

You can use the familiar Matplotlib style calling a figure and subplot, but you simply need to specify the current axis using plt.gca(). An example:
plt.figure(1)
plt.subplot(2,2,1)
df.A.plot() #no need to specify for first axis
plt.subplot(2,2,2)
df.B.plot(ax=plt.gca())
plt.subplot(2,2,3)
df.C.plot(ax=plt.gca())
etc...

You can use this:
fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(221)
plt.plot(x,y)
ax = fig.add_subplot(222)
plt.plot(x,z)
...
plt.show()

You may not need to use Pandas at all. Here's a matplotlib plot of cat frequencies:
x = np.linspace(0, 2*np.pi, 400)
y = np.sin(x**2)
f, axes = plt.subplots(2, 1)
for c, i in enumerate(axes):
axes[c].plot(x, y)
axes[c].set_title('cats')
plt.tight_layout()

Option 1: Create subplots from a dictionary of dataframes with long (tidy) data
Assumptions:
There is a dictionary of multiple dataframes of tidy data that are either:
Created by reading in from files
Created by separating a single dataframe into multiple dataframes
The categories, cat, may be overlapping, but all dataframes don't necessarily contain all values of cat
hue='cat'
This example uses a dict of dataframes, but a list of dataframes would be similar.
If the dataframes are wide, use pandas.DataFrame.melt to convert them to long form.
Because dataframes are being iterated through, there's no guarantee that colors will be mapped the same for each plot
A custom color map needs to be created from the unique 'cat' values for all the dataframes
Since the colors will be the same, place one legend to the side of the plots, instead of a legend in every plot
Tested in python 3.10, pandas 1.4.3, matplotlib 3.5.1, seaborn 0.11.2
Imports and Test Data
import pandas as pd
import numpy as np # used for random data
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from matplotlib.patches import Patch # for custom legend - square patches
from matplotlib.lines import Line2D # for custom legend - round markers
import seaborn as sns
import math import ceil # determine correct number of subplot
# synthetic data
df_dict = dict()
for i in range(1, 7):
np.random.seed(i) # for repeatable sample data
data_length = 100
data = {'cat': np.random.choice(['A', 'B', 'C'], size=data_length),
'x': np.random.rand(data_length), 'y': np.random.rand(data_length)}
df_dict[i] = pd.DataFrame(data)
# display(df_dict[1].head())
cat x y
0 B 0.944595 0.606329
1 A 0.586555 0.568851
2 A 0.903402 0.317362
3 B 0.137475 0.988616
4 B 0.139276 0.579745
# display(df_dict[6].tail())
cat x y
95 B 0.881222 0.263168
96 A 0.193668 0.636758
97 A 0.824001 0.638832
98 C 0.323998 0.505060
99 C 0.693124 0.737582
Create color mappings and plot
# create color mapping based on all unique values of cat
unique_cat = {cat for v in df_dict.values() for cat in v.cat.unique()} # get unique cats
colors = sns.color_palette('tab10', n_colors=len(unique_cat)) # get a number of colors
cmap = dict(zip(unique_cat, colors)) # zip values to colors
col_nums = 3 # how many plots per row
row_nums = math.ceil(len(df_dict) / col_nums) # how many rows of plots
# create the figue and axes
fig, axes = plt.subplots(row_nums, col_nums, figsize=(9, 6), sharex=True, sharey=True)
# convert to 1D array for easy iteration
axes = axes.flat
# iterate through dictionary and plot
for ax, (k, v) in zip(axes, df_dict.items()):
sns.scatterplot(data=v, x='x', y='y', hue='cat', palette=cmap, ax=ax)
sns.despine(top=True, right=True)
ax.legend_.remove() # remove the individual plot legends
ax.set_title(f'dataset = {k}', fontsize=11)
fig.tight_layout()
# create legend from cmap
# patches = [Patch(color=v, label=k) for k, v in cmap.items()] # square patches
patches = [Line2D([0], [0], marker='o', color='w', markerfacecolor=v, label=k, markersize=8) for k, v in cmap.items()] # round markers
# place legend outside of plot; change the right bbox value to move the legend up or down
plt.legend(title='cat', handles=patches, bbox_to_anchor=(1.06, 1.2), loc='center left', borderaxespad=0, frameon=False)
plt.show()
Option 2: Create subplots from a single dataframe with multiple separate datasets
The dataframes must be in a long form with the same column names.
This option uses pd.concat to combine multiple dataframes into a single dataframe, and .assign to add a new column.
See Import multiple csv files into pandas and concatenate into one DataFrame for creating a single dataframes from a list of files.
This option is easier because it doesn't require manually mapping colors to 'cat'
Combine DataFrames
# using df_dict, with dataframes as values, from the top
# combine all the dataframes in df_dict to a single dataframe with an identifier column
df = pd.concat((v.assign(dataset=k) for k, v in df_dict.items()), ignore_index=True)
# display(df.head())
cat x y dataset
0 B 0.944595 0.606329 1
1 A 0.586555 0.568851 1
2 A 0.903402 0.317362 1
3 B 0.137475 0.988616 1
4 B 0.139276 0.579745 1
# display(df.tail())
cat x y dataset
595 B 0.881222 0.263168 6
596 A 0.193668 0.636758 6
597 A 0.824001 0.638832 6
598 C 0.323998 0.505060 6
599 C 0.693124 0.737582 6
Plot a FacetGrid with seaborn.relplot
sns.relplot(kind='scatter', data=df, x='x', y='y', hue='cat', col='dataset', col_wrap=3, height=3)
Both options create the same result, however, it's less complicated to combine all the dataframes, and plot a figure-level plot with sns.relplot.

Building on #joris response above, if you have already established a reference to the subplot, you can use the reference as well. For example,
ax1 = plt.subplot2grid((50,100), (0, 0), colspan=20, rowspan=10)
...
df.plot.barh(ax=ax1, stacked=True)

Here is a working pandas subplot example, where modes is the column names of the dataframe.
dpi=200
figure_size=(20, 10)
fig, ax = plt.subplots(len(modes), 1, sharex="all", sharey="all", dpi=dpi)
for i in range(len(modes)):
ax[i] = pivot_df.loc[:, modes[i]].plot.bar(figsize=(figure_size[0], figure_size[1]*len(modes)),
ax=ax[i], title=modes[i], color=my_colors[i])
ax[i].legend()
fig.suptitle(name)

import numpy as np
import pandas as pd
imoprt matplotlib.pyplot as plt
fig, ax = plt.subplots(2,2)
df = pd.DataFrame({'A':np.random.randint(1,100,10),
'B': np.random.randint(100,1000,10),
'C':np.random.randint(100,200,10)})
for ax in ax.flatten():
df.plot(ax =ax)

Proper Matplotlib axes construction / reuse

I currently am building a set of scatter plot charts using pandas plot.scatter. In this construction off of two base axes.
My current construction looks akin to
ax1 = pandas.scatter.plot()
ax2 = pandas.scatter.plot(ax=ax1)
for dataframe in list:
output_ax = pandas.scatter.plot(ax2)
output_ax.get_figure().save("outputfile.png")
total_output_ax = total_list.scatter.plot(ax2)
total_output_ax.get_figure().save("total_output.png")
This seems inefficient. For 1...N permutations I want to reuse a base axes that has 50% of the data already plotted. What I am trying to do is:
Add base data to scatter plot
For item x in y: (save data to base scatter and save image)
Add all data to scatter plot and save image

here's one way to do it with plt.scatter.
I plot column 0 on x-axis, and all other columns on y axis, one at a time.
Notice that there is only 1 ax object, and I don't replot all points, I just add points using the same axes with a for loop.
Each time I get a corresponding png image.
import numpy as np
import pandas as pd
np.random.seed(2)
testdf = pd.DataFrame(np.random.rand(20,4))
testdf.head(5) looks like this
0 1 2 3
0 0.435995 0.025926 0.549662 0.435322
1 0.420368 0.330335 0.204649 0.619271
2 0.299655 0.266827 0.621134 0.529142
3 0.134580 0.513578 0.184440 0.785335
4 0.853975 0.494237 0.846561 0.079645
#I put the first axis out of a loop, that can be in the loop as well
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(1,1,1)
ax.scatter(testdf[0],testdf[1], color='red')
fig.legend()
fig.savefig('fig_1.png')
colors = ['pink', 'green', 'black', 'blue']
for i in range(2,4):
ax.scatter(testdf[0], testdf[i], color=colors[i])
fig.legend()
fig.savefig('full_' + str(i) + '.png')
Then you get these 3 images (fig_1, fig_2, fig_3)

Axes objects cannot be simply copied or transferred. However, it is possible to set artists to visible/invisible in a plot. Given your ambiguous question, it is not fully clear how your data are stored but it seems to be a list of dataframes. In any case, the concept can easily be adapted to different input data.
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
#test data generation
import pandas as pd
import numpy as np
rng = np.random.default_rng(123456)
df_list = [pd.DataFrame(rng.integers(0, 100, (7, 2))) for _ in range(3)]
#plot all dataframes into an axis object to ensure
#that all plots have the same scaling
fig, ax = plt.subplots()
patch_collections = []
for i, df in enumerate(df_list):
pc = ax.scatter(x=df[0], y=df[1], label=str(i))
pc.set_visible(False)
patch_collections.append(pc)
#store individual plots
for i, pc in enumerate(patch_collections):
pc.set_visible(True)
ax.set_title(f"Dataframe {i}")
fig.savefig(f"outputfile{i}.png")
pc.set_visible(False)
#store summary plot
[pc.set_visible(True) for pc in patch_collections]
ax.set_title("All dataframes")
ax.legend()
fig.savefig(f"outputfile_0_{i}.png")
plt.show()