I have too many ticks on my graph and they are running into each other.
How can I reduce the number of ticks?
For example, I have ticks:
1E-6, 1E-5, 1E-4, ... 1E6, 1E7
And I only want:
1E-5, 1E-3, ... 1E5, 1E7
I've tried playing with the LogLocator, but I haven't been able to figure this out.
Alternatively, if you want to simply set the number of ticks while allowing matplotlib to position them (currently only with MaxNLocator), there is pyplot.locator_params,
pyplot.locator_params(nbins=4)
You can specify specific axis in this method as mentioned below, default is both:
# To specify the number of ticks on both or any single axes
pyplot.locator_params(axis='y', nbins=6)
pyplot.locator_params(axis='x', nbins=10)
To solve the issue of customisation and appearance of the ticks, see the Tick Locators guide on the matplotlib website
ax.xaxis.set_major_locator(plt.MaxNLocator(3))
would set the total number of ticks in the x-axis to 3, and evenly distribute them across the axis.
There is also a nice tutorial about this
If somebody still gets this page in search results:
fig, ax = plt.subplots()
plt.plot(...)
every_nth = 4
for n, label in enumerate(ax.xaxis.get_ticklabels()):
if n % every_nth != 0:
label.set_visible(False)
There's a set_ticks() function for axis objects.
in case somebody still needs it, and since nothing
here really worked for me, i came up with a very
simple way that keeps the appearance of the
generated plot "as is" while fixing the number
of ticks to exactly N:
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
f, ax = plt.subplots()
ax.plot(range(100))
ymin, ymax = ax.get_ylim()
ax.set_yticks(np.round(np.linspace(ymin, ymax, N), 2))
The solution #raphael gave is straightforward and quite helpful.
Still, the displayed tick labels will not be values sampled from the original distribution but from the indexes of the array returned by np.linspace(ymin, ymax, N).
To display N values evenly spaced from your original tick labels, use the set_yticklabels() method. Here is a snippet for the y axis, with integer labels:
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
ax = plt.gca()
ymin, ymax = ax.get_ylim()
custom_ticks = np.linspace(ymin, ymax, N, dtype=int)
ax.set_yticks(custom_ticks)
ax.set_yticklabels(custom_ticks)
If you need one tick every N=3 ticks :
N = 3 # 1 tick every 3
xticks_pos, xticks_labels = plt.xticks() # get all axis ticks
myticks = [j for i,j in enumerate(xticks_pos) if not i%N] # index of selected ticks
newlabels = [label for i,label in enumerate(xticks_labels) if not i%N]
or with fig,ax = plt.subplots() :
N = 3 # 1 tick every 3
xticks_pos = ax.get_xticks()
xticks_labels = ax.get_xticklabels()
myticks = [j for i,j in enumerate(xticks_pos) if not i%N] # index of selected ticks
newlabels = [label for i,label in enumerate(xticks_labels) if not i%N]
(obviously you can adjust the offset with (i+offset)%N).
Note that you can get uneven ticks if you wish, e.g. myticks = [1, 3, 8].
Then you can use
plt.gca().set_xticks(myticks) # set new X axis ticks
or if you want to replace labels as well
plt.xticks(myticks, newlabels) # set new X axis ticks and labels
Beware that axis limits must be set after the axis ticks.
Finally, you may wish to draw only an arbitrary set of ticks :
mylabels = ['03/2018', '09/2019', '10/2020']
plt.draw() # needed to populate xticks with actual labels
xticks_pos, xticks_labels = plt.xticks() # get all axis ticks
myticks = [i for i,j in enumerate(b) if j.get_text() in mylabels]
plt.xticks(myticks, mylabels)
(assuming mylabels is ordered ; if it is not, then sort myticks and reorder it).
xticks function auto iterates with range function
start_number = 0
end_number = len(data you have)
step_number = how many skips to make from strat to end
rotation = 90 degrees tilt will help with long ticks
plt.xticks(range(start_number,end_number,step_number),rotation=90)
if you want 10 ticks:
for y axis: ax.set_yticks(ax.get_yticks()[::len(ax.get_yticks())//10])
for x axis: ax.set_xticks(ax.get_xticks()[::len(ax.get_xticks())//10])
this simply gets your ticks and chooses every 10th of the list and sets it back to your ticks. you can change the number of ticks as you wish.
When a log scale is used the number of major ticks can be fixed with the following command
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
....
plt.locator_params(numticks=12)
plt.show()
The value set to numticks determines the number of axis ticks to be displayed.
Credits to #bgamari's post for introducing the locator_params() function, but the nticks parameter throws an error when a log scale is used.
Related
Consider
xdata=np.random.normal(5e5,2e5,int(1e4))
plt.hist(np.log10(xdata), bins=100)
plt.show()
plt.semilogy(xdata)
plt.show()
is there any way to display xticks of the first plot (plt.hist) as in the second plot's yticks? For good reasons I want to histogram the np.log10(xdata) of xdata but I'd like to set minor ticks to display as usual in a log scale (even considering that the exponent is linear...)
In other words, I want the x_axis of this plot:
to be like the y_axis
of the 2nd plot, without changing the spacing between major ticks (e.g., adding log marks between 5.5 and 6.0, without altering these values)
Proper histogram plot with logarithmic x-axis:
Explanation:
Cut off negative values
The randomly generated example data likely contains still some negative values
activate the commented code lines at the beginning to see the effect
logarithmic function isn't defined for values <= 0
while the 2nd plot just deals with y-axis log scaling (negative values are just out of range), the 1st plot doesn't work with negative values in the BINs range
probably real world working data won't be <= 0, otherwise keep that in mind
BINs should be aligned to log scale as well
otherwise the 'BINs widths' distribution looks off
switch # on the plt.hist( statements in the 1st plot section to see the effect)
xdata (not np.log10(xdata)) to be plotted in the histogram
that 'workaround' with plotting np.log10(xdata) probably was the root cause for the misunderstanding in the comments
Code:
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
np.random.seed(42) # just to have repeatable results for the answer
xdata=np.random.normal(5e5,2e5,int(1e4))
# MIN_xdata, MAX_xdata = np.min(xdata), np.max(xdata)
# print(f"{MIN_xdata}, {MAX_xdata}") # note the negative values
# cut off potential negative values (log function isn't defined for <= 0 )
xdata = np.ma.masked_less_equal(xdata, 0)
MIN_xdata, MAX_xdata = np.min(xdata), np.max(xdata)
# print(f"{MIN_xdata}, {MAX_xdata}")
# align the bins to fit a log scale
bins = 100
bins_log_aligned = np.logspace(np.log10(MIN_xdata), np.log10(MAX_xdata), bins)
# 1st plot
plt.hist(xdata, bins = bins_log_aligned) # note: xdata (not np.log10(xdata) )
# plt.hist(xdata, bins = 100)
plt.xscale('log')
plt.show()
# 2nd plot
plt.semilogy(xdata)
plt.show()
Just kept for now for clarification purpose. Will be deleted when the question is revised.
Disclaimer:
As Lucas M. Uriarte already mentioned that isn't an expected way of changing axis ticks.
x axis ticks and labels don't represent the plotted data
You should at least always provide that information along with such a plot.
The plot
From seeing the result I kinda understand where that special plot idea is coming from - still there should be a preferred way (e.g. conversion of the data in advance) to do such a plot instead of 'faking' the axis.
Explanation how that special axis transfer plot is done:
original x-axis is hidden
a twiny axis is added
note that its y-axis is hidden by default, so that doesn't need handling
twiny x-axis is set to log and the 2nd plot y-axis limits are transferred
subplots used to directly transfer the 2nd plot y-axis limits
use variables if you need to stick with your two plots
twiny x-axis is moved from top (twiny default position) to bottom (where the original x-axis was)
Code:
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
np.random.seed(42) # just to have repeatable results for the answer
xdata=np.random.normal(5e5,2e5,int(1e4))
plt.figure()
fig, axs = plt.subplots(2, figsize=(7,10), facecolor=(1, 1, 1))
# 1st plot
axs[0].hist(np.log10(xdata), bins=100) # plot the data on the normal x axis
axs[0].axes.xaxis.set_visible(False) # hide the normal x axis
# 2nd plot
axs[1].semilogy(xdata)
# 1st plot - twin axis
axs0_y_twin = axs[0].twiny() # set a twiny axis, note twiny y axis is hidden by default
axs0_y_twin.set(xscale="log")
# transfer the limits from the 2nd plot y axis to the twin axis
axs0_y_twin.set_xlim(axs[1].get_ylim()[0],
axs[1].get_ylim()[1])
# move the twin x axis from top to bottom
axs0_y_twin.tick_params(axis="x", which="both", bottom=True, top=False,
labelbottom=True, labeltop=False)
# Disclaimer
disclaimer_text = "Disclaimer: x axis ticks and labels don't represent the plotted data"
axs[0].text(0.5,-0.09, disclaimer_text, size=12, ha="center", color="red",
transform=axs[0].transAxes)
plt.tight_layout()
plt.subplots_adjust(hspace=0.2)
plt.show()
This excerpt from my code changes the value of the y axis labels from exponential to millions. Problem is it creates 2 figures. The first one is an x and y axis with no plot (and the scale of the x axis is used for the y axis as well), and then the 2nd figure is exactly what I want. It is a double bar graph.
I am guessing it has something to do with using f.plot.bar instead of plt.bar but I am not sure. I just want to get rid of the first figure than all will be well.
from matplotlib.ticker import FuncFormatter
def millions(x, pos):
'The two args are the value and tick position'
return '%1.1fM' % (x*1e-6)
formatter = FuncFormatter(millions)
fig, ax = plt.subplots()
ax = tempg.plot.bar(y=['Republican2016Votes', 'Democrat2016Votes'], rot=0,
color = ['DarkRed','Blue'])
ax.yaxis.set_major_formatter(formatter)
plt.show()
I have too many ticks on my graph and they are running into each other.
How can I reduce the number of ticks?
For example, I have ticks:
1E-6, 1E-5, 1E-4, ... 1E6, 1E7
And I only want:
1E-5, 1E-3, ... 1E5, 1E7
I've tried playing with the LogLocator, but I haven't been able to figure this out.
Alternatively, if you want to simply set the number of ticks while allowing matplotlib to position them (currently only with MaxNLocator), there is pyplot.locator_params,
pyplot.locator_params(nbins=4)
You can specify specific axis in this method as mentioned below, default is both:
# To specify the number of ticks on both or any single axes
pyplot.locator_params(axis='y', nbins=6)
pyplot.locator_params(axis='x', nbins=10)
To solve the issue of customisation and appearance of the ticks, see the Tick Locators guide on the matplotlib website
ax.xaxis.set_major_locator(plt.MaxNLocator(3))
would set the total number of ticks in the x-axis to 3, and evenly distribute them across the axis.
There is also a nice tutorial about this
If somebody still gets this page in search results:
fig, ax = plt.subplots()
plt.plot(...)
every_nth = 4
for n, label in enumerate(ax.xaxis.get_ticklabels()):
if n % every_nth != 0:
label.set_visible(False)
There's a set_ticks() function for axis objects.
in case somebody still needs it, and since nothing
here really worked for me, i came up with a very
simple way that keeps the appearance of the
generated plot "as is" while fixing the number
of ticks to exactly N:
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
f, ax = plt.subplots()
ax.plot(range(100))
ymin, ymax = ax.get_ylim()
ax.set_yticks(np.round(np.linspace(ymin, ymax, N), 2))
The solution #raphael gave is straightforward and quite helpful.
Still, the displayed tick labels will not be values sampled from the original distribution but from the indexes of the array returned by np.linspace(ymin, ymax, N).
To display N values evenly spaced from your original tick labels, use the set_yticklabels() method. Here is a snippet for the y axis, with integer labels:
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
ax = plt.gca()
ymin, ymax = ax.get_ylim()
custom_ticks = np.linspace(ymin, ymax, N, dtype=int)
ax.set_yticks(custom_ticks)
ax.set_yticklabels(custom_ticks)
If you need one tick every N=3 ticks :
N = 3 # 1 tick every 3
xticks_pos, xticks_labels = plt.xticks() # get all axis ticks
myticks = [j for i,j in enumerate(xticks_pos) if not i%N] # index of selected ticks
newlabels = [label for i,label in enumerate(xticks_labels) if not i%N]
or with fig,ax = plt.subplots() :
N = 3 # 1 tick every 3
xticks_pos = ax.get_xticks()
xticks_labels = ax.get_xticklabels()
myticks = [j for i,j in enumerate(xticks_pos) if not i%N] # index of selected ticks
newlabels = [label for i,label in enumerate(xticks_labels) if not i%N]
(obviously you can adjust the offset with (i+offset)%N).
Note that you can get uneven ticks if you wish, e.g. myticks = [1, 3, 8].
Then you can use
plt.gca().set_xticks(myticks) # set new X axis ticks
or if you want to replace labels as well
plt.xticks(myticks, newlabels) # set new X axis ticks and labels
Beware that axis limits must be set after the axis ticks.
Finally, you may wish to draw only an arbitrary set of ticks :
mylabels = ['03/2018', '09/2019', '10/2020']
plt.draw() # needed to populate xticks with actual labels
xticks_pos, xticks_labels = plt.xticks() # get all axis ticks
myticks = [i for i,j in enumerate(b) if j.get_text() in mylabels]
plt.xticks(myticks, mylabels)
(assuming mylabels is ordered ; if it is not, then sort myticks and reorder it).
xticks function auto iterates with range function
start_number = 0
end_number = len(data you have)
step_number = how many skips to make from strat to end
rotation = 90 degrees tilt will help with long ticks
plt.xticks(range(start_number,end_number,step_number),rotation=90)
if you want 10 ticks:
for y axis: ax.set_yticks(ax.get_yticks()[::len(ax.get_yticks())//10])
for x axis: ax.set_xticks(ax.get_xticks()[::len(ax.get_xticks())//10])
this simply gets your ticks and chooses every 10th of the list and sets it back to your ticks. you can change the number of ticks as you wish.
When a log scale is used the number of major ticks can be fixed with the following command
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
....
plt.locator_params(numticks=12)
plt.show()
The value set to numticks determines the number of axis ticks to be displayed.
Credits to #bgamari's post for introducing the locator_params() function, but the nticks parameter throws an error when a log scale is used.
In a loop I have created some subplots using Matplotlib.
I noticed that in some instances the Y axis (particularly when displaying 0's) shows some negative numbers on the Y axis.
Is there a parameter to force the Y axis to display Positive numbers (i.e. from 0 upwards.
And a parameter to make the Y axis values either one or no decimal places. (display 2 instead of 2.0 or 2.00 (which it seems to do automatically depending on the data).
code:
for a in account_list:
f = plt.figure()
f.set_figheight(20)
f.set_figwidth(20)
f.sharex = True
f.sharey=True
left = 0.125 # the left side of the subplots of the figure
right = 0.9 # the right side of the subplots of the figure
bottom = 0.1 # the bottom of the subplots of the figure
top = 0.9 # the top of the subplots of the figure
wspace = 0.2 # the amount of width reserved for blank space between subplots
hspace = .8 # the amount of height reserved for white space between subplots
subplots_adjust(left=left, right=right, bottom=bottom, top=top, wspace=wspace, hspace=hspace)
count = 1
for h in headings:
sorted_data[sorted_data.account == a].ix[0:,['month_date',h]].plot(ax=f.add_subplot(7,3,count),legend=True,subplots=True,x='month_date',y=h)
import matplotlib.patches as mpatches
legend_name = mpatches.Patch(color='none', label=h)
plt.xlabel("")
ppl.legend(handles=[legend_name],bbox_to_anchor=(0.,1.2,1.0,.10), loc="center",ncol=2, mode="expand", borderaxespad=0.)
count = count + 1
EDIT
When I set the minimum and maximum for the Y axis using the below: I end up with the numbers repeating. For instance where the plot used to have on the Y axis: 1, 1.5, 2, 2.5 it now just has 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, (I want each number to only appear once.
Maybe it has to do with the fact that my if statement is not working. I want all plots with a maximum Y axis value lower than ten to have their maximum Y value set to ten.
#set bottom Y axis limit to 0 and change number format to 1 dec place.
axis_data = f.gca()
from matplotlib.ticker import FormatStrFormatter
axis_data.yaxis.set_major_formatter(FormatStrFormatter('%.0f'))
#set only integers on Y axis >>>
import matplotlib.ticker as ticker
axis_data.xaxis.set_major_locator(ticker.MaxNLocator(integer=True))
#if y max < 10 make it ten
ymin,ymax = axis_data.get_ylim()
print(type(ymax))
if ymax <10:
axis_data.set_ylim(bottom=0.,top=ymax)
else:
axis_data.set_ylim(bottom=0.)
ax.set_ylim is the method which changes the limits on the y-axis of the subplot. In order to use this, you must have at your disposal an Axes instance (the one that is returned by plt.subplot); then you can set the lower limit to 0. Something along these lines should work:
ax = plt.subplot(1, 1, 1)
ax.plot(x, y)
ax.set_ylim(bottom=0.)
plt.show()
To change the tick label format, one convenient way is to use FormatStrFormatter:
from matplotlib.ticker import FormatStrFormatter
ax.yaxis.set_major_formatter(FormatStrFormatter('%.1f'))
EDIT:
I've looked at your code; you can get an Axes instance with fig.gca() method, then setting ylim and major_formatter as described above.
EDIT2:
The problem addressed it the comment can be solved by specifying the ticks locator. The locator used by default is AutoLocator, which is essentially the MaxNLocator with default values. One of the keywords taken by MaxNLocator is integer, which specifies only integer values for ticks and is False by default. Thus, to make ticks take only integer values, you need to define for y-axis MaxNLocator with integer=True. This should work:
from matplotlib.ticker import MaxNLocator
ax.yaxis.set_major_locator(MaxNLocator(integer=True))
EDIT3:
And if you want to set your top y limit to 10, you should explicitly set it to 10:
if ymax < 10:
axis_data.set_ylim(bottom=0., top=10.)
else:
axis_data.set_ylim(bottom=0.)
The axis range can be limited to a particular range by xlim() or ylim(), e.g.
ylim([0,2])
and the axis ticks can be set manually to any string using xticks() or yticks(), e.g.
yticks([0,1,2],["0","1","2"])
Unfortunately there are many ways to adjust the ticks. So it can sometimes become a mess.
Try:
tickpos = [1,2,5]
py.axis(ymin = 0)
py.yticks(tickpos,tickpos)
If you don't use tickpos in both arguments and use two different arrays, the first array says where the ticks are. The second says what the tick labels are. This is useful if maybe you want the label to be a string (say it's a bar chart and you want the label to be category for the given bar). It's very dangerous if you have them as numbers because you may find that you move the tick location, but not the label. So you're labeling location y=4 as, say, 6. The following would be BAD
py.yticks([1,2,3], [1, 4, -1]) #DO NOT DO THIS
You can also set
py.axis(ymin = 0, ymax = 4, xmin = 3)
or other variants depending on what limits you want py to be free to set. As a note, sometimes I set ymax = 4.000001 if I want to be sure that the tick at y=4 appears.
I'm drawing the bloxplot shown below using python and matplotlib. Is there any way I can reduce the distance between the two boxplots on the X axis?
This is the code that I'm using to get the figure above:
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from matplotlib import rcParams
rcParams['ytick.direction'] = 'out'
rcParams['xtick.direction'] = 'out'
fig = plt.figure()
xlabels = ["CG", "EG"]
ax = fig.add_subplot(111)
ax.boxplot([values_cg, values_eg])
ax.set_xticks(np.arange(len(xlabels))+1)
ax.set_xticklabels(xlabels, rotation=45, ha='right')
fig.subplots_adjust(bottom=0.3)
ylabels = yticks = np.linspace(0, 20, 5)
ax.set_yticks(yticks)
ax.set_yticklabels(ylabels)
ax.tick_params(axis='x', pad=10)
ax.tick_params(axis='y', pad=10)
plt.savefig(os.path.join(output_dir, "output.pdf"))
And this is an example closer to what I'd like to get visually (although I wouldn't mind if the boxplots were even a bit closer to each other):
You can either change the aspect ratio of plot or use the widths kwarg (doc) as such:
ax.boxplot([values_cg, values_eg], widths=1)
to make the boxes wider.
Try changing the aspect ratio using
ax.set_aspect(1.5) # or some other float
The larger then number, the narrower (and taller) the plot should be:
a circle will be stretched such that the height is num times the width. aspect=1 is the same as aspect=’equal’.
http://matplotlib.org/api/axes_api.html#matplotlib.axes.Axes.set_aspect
When your code writes:
ax.set_xticks(np.arange(len(xlabels))+1)
You're putting the first box plot on 0 and the second one on 1 (event though you change the tick labels afterwards), just like in the second, "wanted" example you gave they are set on 1,2,3.
So i think an alternative solution would be to play with the xticks position and the xlim of the plot.
for example using
ax.set_xlim(-1.5,2.5)
would place them closer.
positions : array-like, optional
Sets the positions of the boxes. The ticks and limits are automatically set to match the positions. Defaults to range(1, N+1) where N is the number of boxes to be drawn.
https://matplotlib.org/3.1.1/api/_as_gen/matplotlib.pyplot.boxplot.html
This should do the job!
As #Stevie mentioned, you can use the positions kwarg (doc) to manually set the x-coordinates of the boxes:
ax.boxplot([values_cg, values_eg], positions=[1, 1.3])