Matplotlib tutorial

Nicolas Rougier

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 Matplotlib tutorial
Nicolas P. Rougier - Euroscipy 2012 - Prace 2013 -
Euroscipy 2013

Introduction
Simple plot
Figures, Subplots, Axes and Ticks
Other Types of Plots
Beyond this tutorial
Quick references

Note This tutorial is based on Mike Müller's tutorial available from the scipy
There is now an accompanying lecture notes.
numpy tutorial.
Sources are available here. Figures are in the figures directory and all
scripts are located in the scripts directory. Github repository is here

All code and material is licensed under a Creative Commons

Attribution 3.0 United States License (CC-by)
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us

Many thanks to Bill Wing and Christoph Deil for review and
corrections.

Introductory slides on scientific visualization are here

Introduction
matplotlib is probably the single most used Python package for 2D-
graphics. It provides both a very quick way to visualize data from
Python and publication-quality figures in many formats. We are going
to explore matplotlib in interactive mode covering most common
cases.
IPython and the pylab mode

IPython is an enhanced interactive Python shell that has lots of

interesting features including named inputs and outputs, access to shell
commands, improved debugging and many more. When we start it
with the command line argument -pylab (--pylab since IPython version
0.12), it allows interactive matplotlib sessions that have
Matlab/Mathematica-like functionality.

pylab

pylab provides a procedural interface to the matplotlib object-oriented

plotting library. It is modeled closely after Matlab(TM). Therefore, the
majority of plotting commands in pylab have Matlab(TM) analogs with
similar arguments. Important commands are explained with interactive
examples.

Simple plot
In this section, we want to draw the cosine and sine functions on the
same plot. Starting from the default settings, we'll enrich the figure step
by step to make it nicer.

First step is to get the data for the sine and cosine functions:

from pylab import *

X = np.linspace(-np.pi, np.pi, 256,endpoint=True)

C,S = np.cos(X), np.sin(X)

X is now a numpy array with 256 values ranging from -π to +π

(included). C is the cosine (256 values) and S is the sine (256 values).

To run the example, you can type them in an IPython interactive

session

$ ipython --pylab
This brings us to the IPython prompt:

IPython 0.13 -- An enhanced Interactive Python.

? -> Introduction to IPython's features.
%magic -> Information about IPython's 'magic' % functions.
 help -> Python's own help system.
object? -> Details about 'object'. ?object also works, ?? print
s more.

Welcome to pylab, a matplotlib-based Python environment.

For more information, type 'help(pylab)'.

or you can download each of the examples and run it using regular
python:

$ python exercice_1.py

You can get source for each step by clicking on the corresponding
figure.

Using defaults

Documentation
plot tutorial
plot() command

Matplotlib comes with a set of default settings that allow customizing

all kinds of properties. You can control the defaults of almost every
property in matplotlib: figure size and dpi, line width, color and style,
axes, axis and grid properties, text and font properties and so on.
While matplotlib defaults are rather good in most cases, you may want
to modify some properties for specific cases.

from pylab import *

X = np.linspace(-np.pi, np.pi, 256,endpoint=True)

C,S = np.cos(X), np.sin(X)

plot(X,C)
plot(X,S)

show()
 Instantiating defaults

Documentation
Customizing matplotlib

In the script below, we've instantiated (and commented) all the figure
settings that influence the appearance of the plot. The settings have
been explicitly set to their default values, but now you can
interactively play with the values to explore their affect (see Line
properties and Line styles below).

# Import everything from matplotlib (numpy is accessible via 'n

p' alias)
from pylab import *

# Create a new figure of size 8x6 points, using 80 dots per inc
h
figure(figsize=(8,6), dpi=80)

# Create a new subplot from a grid of 1x1

subplot(1,1,1)

X = np.linspace(-np.pi, np.pi, 256,endpoint=True)

C,S = np.cos(X), np.sin(X)

# Plot cosine using blue color with a continuous line of width

1 (pixels)
plot(X, C, color="blue", linewidth=1.0, linestyle="-")

# Plot sine using green color with a continuous line of width 1

(pixels)
plot(X, S, color="green", linewidth=1.0, linestyle="-")

# Set x limits
xlim(-4.0,4.0)

# Set x ticks
xticks(np.linspace(-4,4,9,endpoint=True))

# Set y limits
ylim(-1.0,1.0)

# Set y ticks
 yticks(np.linspace(-1,1,5,endpoint=True))

# Save figure using 72 dots per inch

# savefig("exercice_2.png",dpi=72)

# Show result on screen

show()

Changing colors and line widths

Documentation
Controlling line properties
Line API

First step, we want to have the cosine in blue and the sine in red and a
slighty thicker line for both of them. We'll also slightly alter the figure
size to make it more horizontal.

...
figure(figsize=(10,6), dpi=80)
plot(X, C, color="blue", linewidth=2.5, linestyle="-")
plot(X, S, color="red", linewidth=2.5, linestyle="-")
...

Setting limits

Documentation Current limits of the figure are a bit too tight and we want to make
xlim() command some space in order to clearly see all data points.
ylim() command

...
xlim(X.min()*1.1, X.max()*1.1)
ylim(C.min()*1.1, C.max()*1.1)
...
 Setting ticks

Documentation
xticks() command
yticks() command
Tick container
Tick locating and formatting

Current ticks are not ideal because they do not show the interesting
values (+/-π,+/-π/2) for sine and cosine. We'll change them such that
they show only these values.

...
xticks( [-np.pi, -np.pi/2, 0, np.pi/2, np.pi])
yticks([-1, 0, +1])
...

Setting tick labels

Documentation Ticks are now properly placed but their label is not very explicit. We
Working with text could guess that 3.142 is π but it would be better to make it explicit.
xticks() command
yticks() command
set_xticklabels()
set_yticklabels()

When we set tick values, we can also provide a corresponding label in

the second argument list. Note that we'll use latex to allow for nice
rendering of the label.

...
xticks([-np.pi, -np.pi/2, 0, np.pi/2, np.pi],
[r'$-\pi$', r'$-\pi/2$', r'$0$', r'$+\pi/2$', r'$+\pi$']
)

yticks([-1, 0, +1],
[r'$-1$', r'$0$', r'$+1$'])
...

Moving spines

Documentation
Spines
Axis container
Transformations tutorial

Spines are the lines connecting the axis tick marks and noting the
boundaries of the data area. They can be placed at arbitrary positions
and until now, they were on the border of the axis. We'll change that
since we want to have them in the middle. Since there are four of them
 (top/bottom/left/right), we'll discard the top and right by setting their
color to none and we'll move the bottom and left ones to coordinate 0
in data space coordinates.

...
ax = gca()
ax.spines['right'].set_color('none')
ax.spines['top'].set_color('none')
ax.xaxis.set_ticks_position('bottom')
ax.spines['bottom'].set_position(('data',0))
ax.yaxis.set_ticks_position('left')
ax.spines['left'].set_position(('data',0))
...

Adding a legend

Documentation
Legend guide
legend() command
Legend API

Let's add a legend in the upper left corner. This only requires adding
the keyword argument label (that will be used in the legend box) to the
plot commands.

...
plot(X, C, color="blue", linewidth=2.5, linestyle="-", label="c
osine")
plot(X, S, color="red", linewidth=2.5, linestyle="-", label="s
ine")

legend(loc='upper left')
...

Annotate some points

Documentation Let's annotate some interesting points using the annotate command.
Annotating axis
annotate() command

We chose the 2π/3 value and we want to annotate both the sine and
the cosine. We'll first draw a marker on the curve as well as a straight
dotted line. Then, we'll use the annotate command to display some
text with an arrow.

...

t = 2*np.pi/3
plot([t,t],[0,np.cos(t)], color ='blue', linewidth=2.5, linesty
le="--")
scatter([t,],[np.cos(t),], 50, color ='blue')

annotate(r'$\sin(\frac{2\pi}{3})=\frac{\sqrt{3}}{2}$',
xy=(t, np.sin(t)), xycoords='data',
xytext=(+10, +30), textcoords='offset points', fontsiz
e=16,
arrowprops=dict(arrowstyle="->", connectionstyle="arc3
,rad=.2"))

plot([t,t],[0,np.sin(t)], color ='red', linewidth=2.5, linestyl

e="--")
scatter([t,],[np.sin(t),], 50, color ='red')

annotate(r'$\cos(\frac{2\pi}{3})=-\frac{1}{2}$',
xy=(t, np.cos(t)), xycoords='data',
xytext=(-90, -50), textcoords='offset points', fontsiz
e=16,
arrowprops=dict(arrowstyle="->", connectionstyle="arc3
,rad=.2"))
...

Devil is in the details

Documentation The tick labels are now hardly visible because of the blue and red
Artists lines. We can make them bigger and we can also adjust their
BBox
properties such that they'll be rendered on a semi-transparent white
background. This will allow us to see both the data and the labels.

...
 f
o
r

l
a
b
e
l

i
n

a
x
.
g
e
t
_
x
t
icklabels() + ax.get_yticklabels():
label.set_fontsize(16)
label.set_bbox(dict(facecolor='white', edgecolor='None', al
pha=0.65 ))
...

Figures, Subplots, Axes and Ticks

So far we have used implicit figure and axes creation. This is handy for
fast plots. We can have more control over the display using figure,
subplot, and axes explicitly. A figure in matplotlib means the whole
window in the user interface. Within this figure there can be subplots.
While subplot positions the plots in a regular grid, axes allows free
placement within the figure. Both can be useful depending on your
intention. We've already worked with figures and subplots without
explicitly calling them. When we call plot, matplotlib calls gca() to get
the current axes and gca in turn calls gcf() to get the current figure. If
there is none it calls figure() to make one, strictly speaking, to make a
subplot(111). Let's look at the details.

Figures

A figure is the windows in the GUI that has "Figure #" as title. Figures
are numbered starting from 1 as opposed to the normal Python way
starting from 0. This is clearly MATLAB-style. There are several
parameters that determine what the figure looks like:
Argument Default Description
num 1 number of figure
figsize figure.figsize figure size in in inches (width, height)
dpi figure.dpi resolution in dots per inch
facecolor figure.facecolor color of the drawing background
edgecolor figure.edgecolor color of edge around the drawing
background
frameon True draw figure frame or not

The defaults can be specified in the resource file and will be used most
of the time. Only the number of the figure is frequently changed.

When you work with the GUI you can close a figure by clicking on the
x in the upper right corner. But you can close a figure
programmatically by calling close. Depending on the argument it
closes (1) the current figure (no argument), (2) a specific figure (figure
number or figure instance as argument), or (3) all figures (all as
argument).

As with other objects, you can set figure properties also setp or with
the set_something methods.

Subplots

With subplot you can arrange plots in a regular grid. You need to
specify the number of rows and columns and the number of the plot.
Note that the gridspec command is a more powerful alternative.
Axes

Axes are very similar to subplots but allow placement of plots at any
location in the figure. So if we want to put a smaller plot inside a
bigger one we do so with axes.

Ticks

Well formatted ticks are an important part of publishing-ready figures.

Matplotlib provides a totally configurable system for ticks. There are
tick locators to specify where ticks should appear and tick formatters to
give ticks the appearance you want. Major and minor ticks can be
located and formatted independently from each other. Per default
minor ticks are not shown, i.e. there is only an empty list for them
because it is as NullLocator (see below).

Tick Locators

There are several locators for different kind of requirements:

Class Description
NullLocator No ticks.

IndexLocator Place a tick on every multiple of some base number of points

plotted.

FixedLocator Tick locations are fixed.

LinearLocator Determine the tick locations.

MultipleLocator Set a tick on every integer that is multiple of some base.

AutoLocator Select no more than n intervals at nice locations.

LogLocator Determine the tick locations for log axes.

All of these locators derive from the base class

matplotlib.ticker.Locator. You can make your own locator deriving
from it. Handling dates as ticks can be especially tricky. Therefore,
matplotlib provides special locators in matplotlib.dates.

Other Types of Plots

 Regular Plots

Hints Starting from the

You need to use the fill_between code below, try to
command.
reproduce the
graphic on the right
taking care of filled
areas:

from pylab import

*

n = 256
X = np.linspace(-n
p.pi,np.pi,n,endpo
int=True)
Y = np.sin(2*X)

plot (X, Y+1, color='blue', alpha=1.00)

plot (X, Y-1, color='blue', alpha=1.00)
show()

Click on figure for solution.

Scatter Plots

Hints Starting from the

Color is given by angle of (X,Y). code below, try to
reproduce the
graphic on the right
taking care of marker
size, color and
transparency.

from pylab import

*

n = 1024
X = np.random.norm
al(0,1,n)
Y = np.random.normal(0,1,n)

scatter(X,Y)
show()

Click on figure for solution.

 Bar Plots

Hints Starting from the

You need to take care of text code below, try to
alignment.
reproduce the
graphic on the right
by adding labels for
red bars.

from pylab import

*

n = 12
X = np.arange(n)
Y1 = (1-X/float(n)
) * np.random.unif
orm(0.5,1.0,n)
Y2 = (1-X/float(n)) * np.random.uniform(0.5,1.0,n)

bar(X, +Y1, facecolor='#9999ff', edgecolor='white')

bar(X, -Y2, facecolor='#ff9999', edgecolor='white')

for x,y in zip(X,Y1):

text(x+0.4, y+0.05, '%.2f' % y, ha='center', va= 'bottom')

ylim(-1.25,+1.25)
show()

Click on figure for solution.

Contour Plots

Hints Starting from the

You need to use the clabel code below, try to
command.
reproduce the
graphic on the right
taking care of the
colormap (see
Colormaps below).

from pylab import

*

def f(x,y): return

(1-x/2+x**5+y**3)
*np.exp(-x**2-y**2)

n = 256
x = np.linspace(-3,3,n)
y = np.linspace(-3,3,n)
X,Y = np.meshgrid(x,y)

contourf(X, Y, f(X,Y), 8, alpha=.75, cmap='jet')

 C = contour(X, Y, f(X,Y), 8, colors='black', linewidth=.5)
show()

Click on figure for solution.

Imshow

Hints Starting from the

You need to take care of the code below, try to
origin of the image in the
reproduce the
imshow command and use a
colorbar graphic on the right
taking care of
colormap, image
interpolation and
origin.

from pylab import

*

def f(x,y): return

(1-x/2+x**5+y**3)*np.exp(-x**2-y**2)

n = 10
x = np.linspace(-3,3,4*n)
y = np.linspace(-3,3,3*n)
X,Y = np.meshgrid(x,y)
imshow(f(X,Y)), show()

Click on figure for solution.

Pie Charts

Hints Starting from the

You need to modify Z. code below, try to
reproduce the
graphic on the right
taking care of colors
and slices size.

from pylab import

*

n = 20
Z = np.random.unif
orm(0,1,n)
pie(Z), show()

Click on figure for solution.

 Quiver Plots

Hints Starting from the

You need to draw arrows twice. code above, try to
reproduce the
graphic on the right
taking care of colors
and orientations.

from pylab import

*

n = 8
X,Y = np.mgrid[0:n
,0:n]
quiver(X,Y), show(
)

Click on figure for solution.

Grids

Starting from the

code below, try to
reproduce the
graphic on the right
taking care of line
styles.

from pylab import

*

axes = gca()
axes.set_xlim(0,4)
axes.set_ylim(0,3)
axes.set_xticklabe
ls([])
axes.set_yticklabels([])

show()

Click on figure for solution.

Multi Plots
Hints Starting from the
You can use several subplots code below, try to
with different partition.
reproduce the
graphic on the right.

from pylab import

*

subplot(2,2,1)
subplot(2,2,3)
subplot(2,2,4)

show()

Click on figure for

solution.

Polar Axis

Hints Starting from the

You only need to modify the code below, try to
axes line
reproduce the
graphic on the right.

from pylab import

*

axes([0,0,1,1])

N = 20
theta = np.arange(
0.0, 2*np.pi, 2*np
.pi/N)
radii = 10*np.rand
om.rand(N)
width = np.pi/4*np.random.rand(N)
bars = bar(theta, radii, width=width, bottom=0.0)

for r,bar in zip(radii, bars):

bar.set_facecolor( cm.jet(r/10.))
bar.set_alpha(0.5)

show()

Click on figure for solution.

3D Plots

Starting from the code below, try to reproduce the graphic on the right.

from pylab import *

Hints from mpl_toolkits.
mplot3d import Axe
You need to use contourf
s3D

fig = figure()
ax = Axes3D(fig)
X = np.arange(-4,
4, 0.25)
Y = np.arange(-4,
4, 0.25)
X, Y = np.meshgrid
(X, Y)
R = np.sqrt(X**2 +
Y**2)
Z = np.sin(R)

ax.plot_surface(X,
Y, Z, rstride=1, cstride=1, cmap='hot')

show()

Click on figure for solution.

Text

Hints Try to do the same

Have a look at the matplotlib from scratch !
logo.
Click on figure for
solution.

Beyond this tutorial

Matplotlib benefits from extensive documentation as well as a large
community of users and developpers. Here are some links of interest:

Tutorials

Pyplot tutorial
 Introduction
Controlling line properties
Working with multiple figures and axes
Working with text
Image tutorial
Startup commands
Importing image data into Numpy arrays
Plotting numpy arrays as images
Text tutorial
Text introduction
Basic text commands
Text properties and layout
Writing mathematical expressions
Text rendering With LaTeX
Annotating text
Artist tutorial
Introduction
Customizing your objects
Object containers
Figure container
Axes container
Axis containers
Tick containers
Path tutorial
Introduction
Bézier example
Compound paths
Transforms tutorial
Introduction
Data coordinates
Axes coordinates
Blended transformations
Using offset transforms to create a shadow effect
The transformation pipeline

Matplotlib documentation

User guide
FAQ
Installation
Usage
How-To
Troubleshooting
Environment Variables
Screenshots

Code documentation

The code is fairly well documented and you can quickly access a
specific command from within a python session:

>>> from pylab import *

>>> help(plot)
Help on function plot in module matplotlib.pyplot:

plot(*args, **kwargs)
Plot lines and/or markers to the
:class:`~matplotlib.axes.Axes`. *args* is a variable length
argument, allowing for multiple *x*, *y* pairs with an
optional format string. For example, each of the following
is
legal::

plot(x, y) # plot x and y using default line sty

le and color
plot(x, y, 'bo') # plot x and y using blue circle mark
ers
plot(y) # plot y using x as index array 0..N-
1
plot(y, 'r+') # ditto, but with red plusses

If *x* and/or *y* is 2-dimensional, then the corresponding c

olumns
will be plotted.
...

Galleries

The matplotlib gallery is also incredibly useful when you search how
to render a given graphic. Each example comes with its source.

A smaller gallery is also available here.

Mailing lists

Finally, there is a user mailing list where you can ask for help and a
developers mailing list that is more technical.
Quick references
Here is a set of tables that show main properties and styles.

Line properties

Property Description Appearance

alpha (or a) alpha
transparency on 0-
1 scale
antialiased True or False - use
antialised
rendering
color (or c) matplotlib color
arg
linestyle (or ls) see Line
properties
linewidth (or lw) float, the line
width in points
solid_capstyle Cap style for solid
lines
solid_joinstyle Join style for solid
lines
dash_capstyle Cap style for
dashes
dash_joinstyle Join style for
dashes
marker see Markers

markeredgewidth line width around

(mew) the marker symbol
markeredgecolor edge color if a
(mec) marker is used
markerfacecolor face color if a
(mfc) marker is used
markersize (ms) size of the marker
in points
Line styles

Symbol Description Appearance

- solid line
-- dashed line
-. dash-dot line
: dotted line
. points
, pixels
o circle
^ triangle up
v triangle down
< triangle left
> triangle right

s square

+ plus
x cross
D diamond

d thin diamond
1 tripod down
2 tripod up
3 tripod left
4 tripod right
h hexagon
H rotated hexagon
p pentagon
| vertical line
_ horizontal line

Markers

Symbol Description Appearance

0 tick left
1 tick right
2 tick up
3 tick down
4 caret left
5 caret right
6 caret up

7 caret down

o circle

D diamond
h hexagon 1
H hexagon 2
_ horizontal line

1 tripod down

2 tripod up
3 tripod left
4 tripod right
8 octagon
p pentagon
^ triangle up
v triangle down
< triangle left
> triangle right
d thin diamond
, pixel
+ plus
. point
s square
* star
| vertical line
x cross
r'$\sqrt{2}$' any latex expression

Colormaps

All colormaps can be reversed by appending _r. For instance, gray_r is

the reverse of gray.

If you want to know more about colormaps, checks Documenting the

matplotlib colormaps.

Base

Name Appearance
autumn
bone
cool
copper
flag
gray
hot
hsv
jet
pink
prism
spectral
spring
summer
winter

GIST

Name Appearance
gist_earth
gist_gray
gist_heat
gist_ncar
gist_rainbow

gist_stern
gist_yarg

Sequential

Name Appearance
BrBG
PiYG
PRGn
PuOr
RdBu
RdGy
RdYlBu
RdYlGn
Spectral

Diverging

Name Appearance
Blues
BuGn
BuPu
GnBu
Greens
Greys
Oranges
OrRd
PuBu
PuBuGn
PuRd
Purples
RdPu

Reds

YlGn
YlGnBu

YlOrBr
YlOrRd

Qualitative

Name Appearance

Accent
Dark2
Paired
Pastel1

Pastel2
Set1
Set2
Set3

Miscellaneous

Name Appearance
afmhot
binary
brg
bwr
coolwarm
CMRmap
cubehelix
gnuplot
gnuplot2
ocean

rainbow
seismic
terrain