I would like to plot a set of points using pyplot in matplotlib but have none of the points be on the edge of my axes. The autoscale (or something) sets the xlim and ylim such that often the first and last points lie at x = xmin or xmax making it difficult to read in some situations.
This is more often problematic with loglog() or semilog() plots because the autoscale would like xmin and xmax to be exact powers of ten, but if my data contains only three points, e.g. at xdata = [10**2,10**3,10**4] then the first and last points will lie on the border of the plot.
Attempted Workaround
This is my solution to add a 10% buffer to either side of the graph. But is there a way to do this more elegantly or automatically?
from numpy import array, log10
from matplotlib.pyplot import *
xdata = array([10**2,10**3,10**4])
ydata = xdata**2
figure()
loglog(xdata,ydata,'.')
xmin,xmax = xlim()
xbuff = 0.1*log10(xmax/xmin)
xlim(xmin*10**(-xbuff),xmax*10**(xbuff))
I am hoping for a one- or two-line solution that I can easily use whenever I make a plot like this.
Linear Plot
To make clear what I'm doing in my workaround, I should add an example in linear space (instead of log space):
plot(xdata,ydata)
xmin,xmax = xlim()
xbuff = 0.1*(xmax-xmin)
xlim(xmin-xbuff,xmax+xbuff))
which is identical to the previous example but for a linear axis.
Limits too large
A related problem is that sometimes the limits are too large. Say my data is something like ydata = xdata**0.25 so that the variance in the range is much less than a decade but ends at exactly 10**1. Then, the autoscale ylim are 10**0 to 10**1 though the data are only in the top portion of the plot. Using my workaround above, I can increase ymax so that the third point is fully within the limits but I don't know how to increase ymin so that there is less whitespace at the lower portion of my plot. i.e., the point is that I don't always want to spread my limits apart but would just like to have some constant (or proportional) buffer around all my points.
#askewchan I just succesfully achieved how to change matplotlib settings by editing matplotlibrc configuration file and running python directly from terminal. Don't know the reason yet, but matplotlibrc is not working when I run python from spyder3 (my IDE). Just follow steps here matplotlib.org/users/customizing.html.
1) Solution one (default for all plots)
Try put this in matplotlibrc and you will see the buffer increase:
axes.xmargin : 0.1 # x margin. See `axes.Axes.margins`
axes.ymargin : 0.1 # y margin See `axes.Axes.margins`
Values must be between 0 and 1.
Obs.: Due to bugs, scale is not correctly working yet. It'll be fixed for matplotlib 1.5 (mine is 1.4.3 yet...). More info:
axes.xmargin/ymargin rcParam behaves differently than pyplot.margins() #2298
Better auto-selection of axis limits #4891
2) Solution two (individually for each plot inside the code)
There is also the margins function (for put directly in the code). Example:
import numpy as np
from matplotlib import pyplot as plt
t = np.linspace(-6,6,1000)
plt.plot(t,np.sin(t))
plt.margins(x=0.1, y=0.1)
plt.savefig('plot.png')
Obs.: Here scale is working (0.1 will increase 10% of buffer before and after x-range and y-range).
A similar question was posed to the matplotlib-users list earlier this year. The most promising solution involves implementing a Locator (based on MaxNLocator in this case) to override MaxNLocator.view_limits.
Related
I am using bqplot to create a live line graph on jupyter-notebook + VOILA
from bqplot import pyplot as plt2
import datetime
x_values = [] #array of datetimes
y_values = [] #array of 10+ digit numbers
plt2.show()
def functionThatIsCalledRepeatedly(x_val, y_val):
x_values.append(x_val)
y_values.append(y_val)
plt2.plot(x_values, y_values)
Part of the Resulting Plot
My question is, how do I remove the scientific notation from the y-axis. It's a simple task but I have tried a lot of things.
I tried using axes.tick_format property of the graph but I think that only works if you have axes objects which I cannot have because they require the mandatory Scale property which I cannot use because the graph is live and the x and y scales need to be generated/recalibrated while it runs.
I tried changing y_values.append(y_val) to y_values.append("{:.2f}".format(y_val)) but that converts to a string and bqplot doesn't process it as a number so it ends up with negative numbers on top of the 0 sometimes.
I tried converting to a numpy array and then doing np.set_printoptions(suppress=True) which (obviously) didn't work.
Basically tried a lot of things and I think it comes down to some bqplot property that may or may not exist. Have been stuck for a while. Thank you!
You can provide axes options with the tick format you want to the plot method:
plt2.plot(x_values, y_values, axes_options={
y=dict(tick_format='0.2f')
})
You can see examples of this axes_options (using a scatter plot, but that should work the same) in this notebook: https://github.com/bqplot/bqplot/blob/master/examples/Marks/Pyplot/Scatter.ipynb
When plotting a histogram, there is an extra bar that shouldn't be there. The bar in the first bin has a non-zero height, even though the frequency as reported by hist output is zero.
Here is a minimal example:
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import random
t=np.array([random.random() for _ in range(10000)])
bins=np.linspace(-0.1, 1.1, 101)
plt.hist(t, bins)
plt.show()
A bar is produced in the first bin, which can be seen midway between the left edge of this figure and the main bulk of the histogram (difficult to see on the thumbnail, enlarge the image):
Printing out print("%2.32f" %plt.hist(t1, bins)[0][1]) gives the value as precisely zero.
This is a small bug in matplotlib that was first introduced in this commit. Basically, the vertices of all of the bin edges are set to 'snap' to the nearest pixel center, with the exception of the first bin. This was done in order to fix another bug, where snapping the first bin edge prevented the histogram bins from aligning properly with corresponding line plots.
There is an open issue relating to this on the matplotlib GitHub page, so it should hopefully be resolved soon.
In the mean time, you could either use plt.bar (as I mentioned in the comments), or manually setting snapping on for the first histogram patch:
counts, edges, patches = plt.histogram(t, bins)
patches[0].set_snap(True)
I'm using Matplotlib in Python to plot simple x-y datasets. This produces nice-looking graphs, although when I "zoom in" too close on various sections of the plotted graph using the Figure View (which appears when you execute plt.show() ), the x-axis values change from standard number form (1050, 1060, 1070 etc.) to scientific form with exponential notation (e.g. 1, 1.5, 2.0 with the x-axis label given as +1.057e3).
I'd prefer my figures to retain the simple numbering of the axis, rather than using exponential form. Is there a way I can force Matplotlib to do this?
The formatting of tick labels is controlled by a Formatter object, which assuming you haven't done anything fancy will be a ScalerFormatterby default. This formatter will use a constant shift if the fractional change of the values visible is very small. To avoid this, simply turn it off:
plt.plot(arange(0,100,10) + 1000, arange(0,100,10))
ax = plt.gca()
ax.get_xaxis().get_major_formatter().set_useOffset(False)
plt.draw()
If you want to avoid scientific notation in general,
ax.get_xaxis().get_major_formatter().set_scientific(False)
Can control this with globally via the axes.formatter.useoffset rcparam.
You can use a simpler command to turn it off:
plt.ticklabel_format(useOffset=False)
You can use something like:
from matplotlib.ticker import ScalarFormatter, FormatStrFormatter
ax.xaxis.set_major_formatter(FormatStrFormatter('%.0f'))
Use the following command:
ax.ticklabel_format(useOffset=False, style='plain')
If you are using a subplot, you may experience the AttributeError: This method only works with the ScalarFormatter in which case you would add axis='y' like the below. You can change 'y' to the axis with the issues.
ax1.ticklabel_format(useOffset=False, style='plain', axis='y')
Source question and answer here. Note, the axis 'y' command use is hidden in the answer comments.
I have used below code before the graphs, and it worked seamless for me..
plt.ticklabel_format(style='plain')
Exactly I didn't want scientific numbers to be shown when I zoom in, and the following worked in my case too. I am using Lat/Lon in labeling where scientific form doesn't make sense.
plt.ticklabel_format(useOffset=False)
Consider the following code
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
time=np.arange(-100,100,01)
val =np.sin(time/10.)
time=-1.0*time
plt.figure()
plt.plot(time,val)
plt.xlim([70,-70])
plt.savefig('test.pdf')
when I open the pdf in inkscape, I can select (with F2) the entire data, it's just invisible outside of the specified xlim interval:
The problem seems to be the line
time=-1.0*time
If I omit this line, everything works perfectly.. no idea why this is. I often need such transformations because I deal with paleo-climate data which are sometimes given in year B.C. and year A.D., respectively.
The problem I see with this behavior is that someone could in principle get the data outside the range which I want to show.
Has someone a clue how to solve this problem (except for an slice of the arrays before plotting)?
I use matplotlib 1.1.1rc2
You can mask your array when plotting according to the limits you choose. Yes, this also requires changes to the code, but maybe not as extensive as you might fear. Here's an updated version of your example:
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
time=np.arange(-100,100,01)
val =np.sin(time/10.)
time=-1.0*time
plt.figure()
# store the x-limites in variables for easy multi-use
XMIN = -70.0
XMAX = 70.0
plt.plot(np.ma.masked_outside(time,XMIN,XMAX),val)
plt.xlim([XMIN,XMAX])
plt.savefig('test.pdf')
The key change is using np.ma.masked_outside for your x-axis value (note: the order of XMIN and XMAX in the mask-command is not important).
That way, you don't have to change the array time if you wanted to use other parts of it later on.
When I checked with inkscape, no data outside of the plot was highlighted.
I am a new user to the python & matplotlib, this might be a simple question but I searched the internet for hours and couldn't find a solution for this.
I am plotting precipitation data from which is in the NetCDF format. What I find weird is that, the data doesn't have any negative values in it.(I checked that many times,just to make sure). But the value in the colorbar starts with a negative value (like -0.0000312 etc). It doesnt make sense because I dont do any manipulations to the data, other that just selecting a part of the data from the big file and plotting it.
So my code doesn't much to it. Here is the code:
from mpl_toolkits.basemap import Basemap
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from netCDF4 import Dataset
cd progs
f=Dataset('V21_GPCP.1979-2009.nc')
lats=f.variables['lat'][:]
lons=f.variables['lon'][:]
prec=f.variables['PREC'][:]
la=lats[31:52]
lo=lons[18:83]
pre=prec[0,31:52,18:83]
m = Basemap(width=06.e6,height=05.e6,projection='gnom',lat_0=15.,lon_0=80.)
x, y = m(*np.meshgrid(lo,la))
m.drawcoastlines()
m.drawmapboundary(fill_color='lightblue')
m.drawparallels(np.arange(-90.,120.,5.),labels=[1,0,0,0])
m.drawmeridians(np.arange(0.,420.,5.),labels=[0,0,0,1])
cs=m.contourf(x,y,pre,50,cmap=plt.cm.jet)
plt.colorbar()
The output that I got for that code was a beautiful plot, with the colorbar starting from the value -0.00001893, and the rest are positive values, and I believe are correct. Its just the minimum value thats bugging me.
I would like to know:
Is there anything wrong in my code? cos I know that the data is right.
Is there a way to manually change the value to 0?
Is it right for the values in the colorbar to change everytime we run the code, cos for the same data, the next time I run the code, the values go like this " -0.00001893, 2.00000000, 4.00000000, 6.00000000 etc"
I want to customize them to "0.0, 2.0, 4.0, 6.0 etc"
Thanks,
Vaishu
Yes, you can manually format everything about the colorbar. See this:
import matplotlib.colors as mc
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
plt.imshow(X, norm=mc.Normalize(vmin=0))
plt.colorbar(ticks=[0,2,4,6], format='%0.2f')
Many plotting functions including imshow, contourf, and others include a norm argument that takes a Normalize object. You can set the vmin or vmax attributes of that object to adjust the corresponding values of the colorbar.
colorbar takes the ticks and format arguments to adjust which ticks to display and how to display them.