

Summary

In this chapter, you learned how to create plots using Python and Matplotlib. Matplotlib and Python can be used to build a variety of plot types. Types of charts built with Matplotlib in this chapter:

plot type	function call
line plots	`plt.plot(x,y)`
muiltline plots	`plt.plot(x1,y1,x2,y2)`
bar graphs	`plt.bar([locations],[sizes])`
pie charts	`plt.pie([sizes])`
histograms	`plt.hist(data)`
scatter plots	`plt.scatter`
Each of the Matplotlib plot types accepts a different set of positional arguments and keyword arguments. Positional arguments must be passed in order, keyword arguments must be passed including the keyword, and an equals sign.
### plt.plot() functions

plot type	matplotlib function	example
line plot	`plt.plot()`	`plt.plot([1, 4, 5])`
multiline plot	`plt.plot()`	`plt.plot(x1,y1,x2,y2)`
bar chart	`plt.bar()`	`plt.bar(x_pos, heights)`
pie chart	`plt.pie()`	`plt.pie(slices_list)`
histogram	`plt.hist()`	`plt.hist(x, 20, density=True, histtype='bar')`
scatter plot	`plt.scatter()`	`plt.scatter(x, y, s=area, c=colors, alpha=0.5)`
The general outline of building a plot with Matplotlib starts with an `import matplotlib.pyplot as plt` line and ends with a `plt.show()` line.

This general outline is shown below:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
%matplotlib inline

<prepare data>

<call plot with data and keyword arguments>

plt.show()

Key Terms and Concepts

plot

graph

histogram

scatter plot

error bars

annotation

arguments

keyword arguments

positional arguments

function

method

object

array

matrix

list

data structure

homogeneous array

heterogeneous array

dimension

tick labels

Additional Resources

Matplotlib official documentation:

https://matplotlib.org/contents.html

Matplotlib summary notebook on Kaggle:

https://www.kaggle.com/grroverpr/matplotlib-plotting-guide/notebook

Python Plotting With Matplotlib (Guide) on Real Python:

https://realpython.com/python-matplotlib-guide/#why-can-matplotlib-be-confusing

Python For Data Science: Matplotlib Cheat Sheet from DataCamp:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/assets.datacamp.com/blog_assets/Python_Matplotlib_Cheat_Sheet.pdf