In short, plotting in Pandas using the plot(~) wrapper provides the ability to create plots very easily with a certain degree of customizability. However, if further customization is required, then this will need to be performed directly using the Matplotlib library.

Dataset

We will be using the classic Iris dataset for the graphs produced throughout this article. It is a commonly used dataset in the machine learning field that contains information on three species of Iris flowers: Setosa, Versicolor, and Virginica.

We load the dataset in as a DataFrame using the below:


        
        
            
                
                
                    import numpy as np
import pandas as pd

df = pd.read_csv('https://raw.githubusercontent.com/SkyTowner/sample_data/main/iris_dataset')
df.head()
                
            
               sepal length (cm)  sepal width (cm)  petal length (cm)  petal width (cm)  target
0                5.1               3.5                1.4               0.2  setosa
1                4.9               3.0                1.4               0.2  setosa
2                4.7               3.2                1.3               0.2  setosa
3                4.6               3.1                1.5               0.2  setosa
4                5.0               3.6                1.4               0.2  setosa

Plot Types

Line Chart

To create a line chart:


        
        
            
                
                
                    ax = df.plot(kind='line', title='Sepal and Petal length / width by record')

ax.set_xlabel('Record #') # Add x-axis label 
ax.set_ylabel('length / width (cm)') # Add y-axis label

This produces a line chart like so:

NOTE

The default for df.plot(~) is to plot a line chart, so removing kind='line' from our code would produce exactly the same result.

Bar Chart

Bar charts are effective when plotting values represented by discrete categories. The bars can be vertical or horizontal.

Vertical

To create a vertical bar chart use df.plot(kind='bar'):


        
        
            
                
                
                    ax = df[:5].plot(kind='bar', title='Vertical Bar Chart')
ax.set_xlabel('Record #') # Add x-axis label 
ax.set_ylabel('length / width (cm)') # Add y-axis label

This produces the following:

NOTE

You can also use df.plot.bar() instead of df.plot(kind='bar') as they are equivalent. The same parameters can be used with both.

Horizontal

To produce a horizontal bar chart use df.plot(kind='barh'):


        
        
            
                
                
                    ax = df[:5].plot(kind='barh', title='Horizontal Bar Chart')
ax.set_xlabel('length / width (cm)') # Add x-axis label 
ax.set_ylabel('Record #') # Add y-axis label

This produces the following:

NOTE

You can also use df.plot.barh() instead of df.plot(kind='barh') as they are equivalent. The same parameters can be used with both.

Stacked

To create a stacked bar chart pass the parameter stacked=True:


        
        
            
                
                
                    ax = df[:5].plot(kind='bar', stacked=True, title='Stacked Bar Chart')
ax.set_xlabel('Record #') # Add x-axis label 
ax.set_ylabel('length / width (cm)') # Add y-axis label

This produces the following:

Box Plot

To create a box plot use df.plot(kind='box'):


        
        
            
                
                
                    ax = df.plot(kind='box', title='Box Plot')
ax.set_xticklabels(['sepal length', 'sepal width', 'petal length', 'petal width']) # Specify xtick labels
ax.set_ylabel('length / width (cm)') # Add y-axis label

This produces the following:

We can see here that petal length shows high dispersion compared to the other features as indicated by the long box (representing the interquartile range). We also notice that sepal width seems to have a few outliers as represented by the circles which we may want to look into further.

NOTE

You can also use df.plot.box() instead of df.plot(kind='box') as they are equivalent. The same parameters can be used with both.

Histogram

Basic

To plot a histogram use df.plot(kind='hist'):


        
        
            
                
                
                    ax = df.plot(kind='hist', title='Histogram Plot')
ax.set_xlabel('length / width (cm)') # Add x-axis label 
ax.set_ylabel('Frequency') # Add y-axis label

This produces the following:

Here we have plotted the frequency of four features on the same histogram. We can see the frequency of each interval for sepal length, sepal width, petal length, and petal width.

NOTE

You can also use df.plot.hist() instead of df.plot(kind='hist') as they are equivalent. The same parameters can be used with both.

Transparent

To adjust the transparency, specify the alpha parameter:


        
        
            
                
                
                    ax = df.plot(kind='hist', title='Histogram Plot', alpha=0.4)
ax.set_xlabel('length / width (cm)') # Add x-axis label 
ax.set_ylabel('Frequency') # Add y-axis label

This produces the following histogram with transparency 60% (i.e. 1 - alpha value):

Here adjusting the transparency is useful as we have overlapping bars due to the fact that we are plotting the distribution of four features on the same plot.

Stacked

To create a stacked histogram pass the parameter stacked=True:


        
        
            
                
                
                    ax = df.plot(kind='hist', title='Stacked Histogram Plot', stacked=True)
ax.set_xlabel('length / width (cm)') # Add x-axis label 
ax.set_ylabel('Frequency') # Add y-axis label

This produces the following:

Kernel Density Estimation

To produce a Kernel Density Estimation plot:


        
        
            
                
                
                    ax = df.plot(kind='kde', title='Kernel Density Estimation')
ax.set_xlabel('length / width (cm)') # Add x-axis label 
ax.set_ylabel('Frequency') # Add y-axis label

This produces the following:

NOTE

You can also use df.plot.kde() instead of df.plot(kind='kde') as they are equivalent. The same parameters can be used with both.

Area Plot

To create an area plot:


        
        
            
                
                
                    ax = df.plot(kind='area', title='Area Plot')
ax.set_xlabel('Record #') # Add x-axis label 
ax.set_ylabel('length / width (cm)') # Add y-axis label

This produces the following:

By default a stacked area plot is produced, however, you can produce the unstacked equivalent by passing stacked=False to df.plot(~).

Scatter Plot

To create a scatter plot:


        
        
            
                
                
                    df.plot(kind='scatter', x='sepal length (cm)', y='petal length (cm)', title='Scatter Plot')

Here we use 'sepal length (cm)' for the x-axis and 'petal length (cm)' for the y-axis.

This produces the following:

Pie Chart

Consider the following DataFrame:


        
        
            
                
                
                    import pandas as pd

df = pd.DataFrame({'A':[1,2,3]}, index=['a','b','c'])
df
                
            
               A
a  1
b  2
c  3

Values

To create a pie chart based on the values of elements in column A:


        
        
            
                
                
                    df.plot(kind='pie', subplots=True, title='Pie Chart')

This produces the following:

NOTE

When creating a pie chart by using a DataFrame, you need to pass subplots=True to indicate that we should generate a pie chart for each column in the DataFrame. If you do not pass this, you will run into an error.

Value counts

To create a pie chart based on the count of elements in column A:


        
        
            
                
                
                    import pandas as pd

df = pd.DataFrame({'A':[1,2,3]}, index=['a','b','c'])
df['A'].value_counts().plot(kind='pie', title='Pie Plot')

This produces the following:

Here we leverage the value_counts(~) method to count the occurrences of each element in column A of the DataFrame. In this example we have 1, 2 and 3 each occurring once resulting in an even breakdown in the pie chart.

Percentage breakdown

To create a pie chart showing percentage breakdown of value counts in column A:


        
        
            
                
                
                    import pandas as pd
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

df = pd.DataFrame({'A':[1,2,3]}, index=['a','b','c'])
df['A'].value_counts().plot(kind='pie', title='Pie Plot', autopct='%1.1f%%')

This produces the following:

The autopct parameter here allows us to specify a format string on how to display the percentage breakdowns of each category. In this example we display percentage values to 1 decimal place.

To remove the column name label appearing on the left side of the chart:


        
        
            
                
                
                    plt.ylabel("")

This produces the following:

Notice how the column name A that was appearing before on the left is no longer visible. What we are actually doing here to achieve this is setting the plot's y axis label as a blank string "".

Useful Tips

For your convenience, recall we are working with the following DataFrame:


        
        
            
                
                
                    import numpy as np
import pandas as pd

df = pd.read_csv('https://raw.githubusercontent.com/SkyTowner/sample_data/main/iris_dataset')
df.head()
                
            
               sepal length (cm)  sepal width (cm)  petal length (cm)  petal width (cm)  target
0                5.1               3.5                1.4               0.2  setosa
1                4.9               3.0                1.4               0.2  setosa
2                4.7               3.2                1.3               0.2  setosa
3                4.6               3.1                1.5               0.2  setosa
4                5.0               3.6                1.4               0.2  setosa

Adjusting plot size

To adjust the plot size specify the figsize parameter when using the df.plot(~) method:


        
        
            
                
                
                    import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

plt.figure()
df.plot(figsize=(8,4), kind='scatter', x='sepal length (cm)', y='petal length (cm)', title='Scatter Plot')
plt.show()

This outputs a graph with width 8 inches and height 4 inches.

Saving your plot

To save the plot you have created use plt.savefig(~):


        
        
            
                
                
                    import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

plt.figure()
df.plot(kind='scatter', x='sepal length (cm)', y='petal length (cm)', title='Scatter Plot')
plt.savefig('my_scatterplot.png')

This will save a png file named "my_scatterplot.png" in the same directory as your Python script.

Published by Arthur Yanagisawa

Edited by 0 others

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