Python Libraries: Matplotlib and Seaborn Tutorial

How to Use Matplotlib and Seaborn for Datascience

Matplotlib reference: https://matplotlib.org/2.1.2/index.html
Seaborn reference: https://seaborn.pydata.org/

Matplotlib is a ubiquitious plotting library for python with infinite customization. Seaborn allows you to make graphs very quickly and beautifully though with less modification options. Both are very compatible with pandas and numpy.

Install jupyter:

pip3 install jupyter

Launch your notebook (opens in browser):

jupyter notebook [name_of_file.ipynb]

Alternatively, you can run Jupyter Notebooks in Google Drive using Colaboratory.

Import

Note: We’ll be relying on Pandas and Numpy in this tutorial.

We need to import matplotlib! Adding %matplotlib inline will make plotting a bit more convenient.

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

Using Matplotlib built into Pandas

If you have a Pandas dataframe, it actually comes with some basic plotting functions that run the matplotlib code for you. It’s a nice shortcut!

yearly_data contains the number of registered babies per year.

yearly_data.head()

	Count
Year
1910	9164
1911	9984
1912	17944
1913	22094
1914	26925

Line Graphs

yearly_data.plot(kind="line")  #kind='line' is optional

<matplotlib.axes._subplots.AxesSubplot at 0x11a052198>

png

Study: Name History

# don't worry about this function unless you want to learn about groupby
def your_name_history(name):
    return baby_names[baby_names['Name'] == name].groupby('Year').sum()

table = your_name_history('John')

table.plot()

<matplotlib.axes._subplots.AxesSubplot at 0x114a44470>

png

Bar Graphs

We can modify our data before we graph it to analyze different things.

yearly_data.plot(kind="bar")
plt.axis('off')

(-0.5, 106.5, 0.0, 580000.05000000005)

png

Class Exercise:

How could we graph only the 15 years after World War II (i.e. 1945-1960)?

Hint: create a table with only the desired years first

modified = yearly_data.loc[1945:1960]

modified.plot(kind="bar", figsize=(15,8))

<matplotlib.axes._subplots.AxesSubplot at 0x11b7f5fd0>

png

Plot with Pandas

Line Graphs

Use plt.plot() to create line graphs! The required arguments are a list of x-values and a list of y-values.

np.random.seed(42) # To ensure that the random number generation is always the same
plt.plot(np.arange(0, 7, 1), np.random.rand(7, 1))
plt.show()

png

%matplotlib inline

plt.plot(np.arange(0, 7, 1), np.random.rand(7, 1))
# plt.show() no longer required

[<matplotlib.lines.Line2D at 0x11bfb12e8>]

png