Make your Data Talk!

Matplotlib and Seaborn are two of the most powerful and popular data visualization libraries in Python. Read on to learn how to create some of the most frequently used graphs and charts using Matplotlib and Seaborn.

(# Tip 5 )

8) In .text and .annotate methods there is a parameter bbox which takes a dictionary to set properties of box around the text. For bbox, you can get away with pad, edgecolor, facecolor and alpha for almost all cases.

9) In .annotate method there is a parameter for setting properties of an arrow, which you will be able to set if you have set xytext parameter, and it is arrowprops. It takes a dictionary as an argument, and you can get away with arrowstyle andcolor.

10) You can use use matplotlib's fill_between or fill_betweenx to fill with a color between two curves. This can come in handy to highlight certain regions of a curve.

D] You should take your time thinking about how you should plot your data and which particular plot will get your message across the most.

from matplotlib.pyplot import figure
figure(figsize=(10, 7))
 
plt.scatter('AveRooms', 'AveBedrms', data=data)
plt.plot(train_df['AveRooms'], Y, linewidth=1, color='red', 
         linestyle='-', alpha=0.8)
 
plt.xlabel("Avg Rooms  ->")
plt.ylabel("Avg BedRooms  ->")

 
# Adding annotations:
plt.annotate("Possible outliers", xy=(144, 31), xytext=(160, 34),
             arrowprops={'arrowstyle':'-[,widthB=4.0', 'color': 
                         'black'},
             bbox={'pad':4, 'edgecolor':'orange', 'facecolor': 
                   'orange', 'alpha':0.4})
 
plt.annotate("Regression Line", xy=(80, 12), xytext=(120, 3),
             arrowprops={'arrowstyle':'->', 'color': 'black', 
                         "connectionstyle":"arc3,rad=-0.2"},
             bbox={'pad':4, 'edgecolor':'orange', 'facecolor': 
                   'orange', 'alpha':0.4});

Storytelling With Matplotlib (SWMat)

swm = SWMat(plt)
plt.scatter(x, y, edgecolors='w', linewidths=0.3)
swm.line_plot(x, Y, highlight=0, highlight_color="#000088", 
              alpha=0.7, line_labels=["Regression Line"])
swm.title("'AveBedrms' and 'AveRooms' are highly correlated!", 
          ttype="title+")
swm.text("Taking both of them in regressioin process\nmight not be 
          necessary. We can either\n<prop color='blue'>take one of 
          them</prop> or <prop color='blue'>take average.</prop>",
          position='out-mid-right', btw_line_dist=5)
swm.axis(labels=["Average Rooms", "Average Bedrooms"])

# 'SWMat' has an `axis` method with which you can set some Axes
# properties such as 'labels', 'color', etc. directly.

1) Normal Matplotlib, 2) Seaborn, 3) Matplotlib Power, 4) Storytelling With Matplotlib

c) 2D-Histograms, Hex Plots and Contour Plots:

2D-Histograms and Hex Plots can be used to check relative density of data at particular position.
Contour plots can be used to plot 3D data in 2D, or plot 4D data in 3D. A contour line (or color strip in filled contour) tells us location where function has constant value. It makes us familiar with the whole landscape of variables used in plotting. For example it can be used in plotting cost function w.r.t. different theta’s in Deep Learning. But to make it you need a lot of data, to be accurate. As for plotting the whole landscape you will need data for all points in that landscape. And if you have a function for that landscape you can easily make these plots by calculating values manually.

from matplotlib.pyplot import figure
figure(figsize=(10, 7))

plt.hist2d('MedInc', 'target', bins=40, data=train_df)
plt.xlabel('Median Income  ->')
plt.ylabel('Target  ->')
plt.suptitle("Median Income vs Target", fontsize=18);

But there is no separate Hex plot/2D-Hist plot method in seaborn, you can use jointplot method’s kind parameter for making a hex plot. For more info look into Joint Plots on seaborn.

(Tip #6)

11) A colorbar needs a Mappable object. Plots such as Contour, Scatter and hist2d gives them by default. There you can simply call plt.colorbar() and it will show a colorbar beside your plot. For other plots you can manually make a colorbar if you want to. [One example in ‘Hist’ section of Jupyter Notebook provided.]

E] Always try to choose a simple plot which can be easily understood by the masses.

# Hexbin Plot:
from matplotlib.pyplot import figure
figure(figsize=(10, 7))

 
plt.hexbin('MedInc', 'target', data=train_df, alpha=1.0, 
           cmap="inferno_r")
 
plt.margins(0)
plt.colorbar()
plt.xlabel('Median Income  ->')
plt.ylabel('Target  ->')
plt.suptitle("Median Income vs Target", fontsize=18);

from matplotlib.pyplot import figure
figure(figsize=(10, 7))
 
plt.hist2d('MedInc', 'target', bins=40, data=train_df, 
           cmap='gist_heat_r') 
plt.colorbar()
plt.xlabel('Median Income  ->')
plt.ylabel('Target  ->')
plt.suptitle("Median Income vs Target", fontsize=18)
 

# Adding annotations:
plt.annotate("Most Blocks have low med.\nincome and lower target.", 
             xy=(5, 1.5), xytext=(10, 2),
             arrowprops={'arrowstyle': '->', 'color': 'k'},
             bbox={'facecolor': 'orange', 'pad':4, 'alpha': 0.5, 
                   'edgecolor': 'orange'});

Contour Plot: A contour plot is a way of visualizing 3D data on a 2D plot. In matplotlib there are two methods available, namely .contour and .contourf. The first one makes line contours and the second one makes filled contours. You can either pass an 2D matrix of z-values or pass in two 2D arrays X, Y for x-values and y-values and an 2D array for all corresponding z-values.

# For contour plot
from matplotlib.pyplot import figure
figure(figsize=(10, 7))
 
plt.contourf(Z, levels=30, cmap="gist_heat_r")
plt.colorbar()
 
plt.suptitle("Target Contour", fontsize=16)
plt.title("(with Medium Income and Population)", 
          position=(0.6, 1.03))
plt.xlabel("Medium Income  ->")
plt.ylabel("Population  ->")

d) Pair Plots:

seaborn provides a method pairplot with which you can plot all possible relational plots in one go. It can be used for quick view into relationship between all variables in your data, and also distribution of every variable.

_ = sns.pairplot(train_df)

4. Categorical Plots

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

Categorical plots are also necessary in Data Exploration step, as they tells us about how different classes of a variable are distributed in dataset. If we have sufficient data, we can make conclusions off these plots for different classes of that variable.

I have added Box Plot and Violin Plot here because of seaborn. In seaborn there are some parameters which you can use to use these methods with different categorical variables.

a) Bar Plot

b) Box Plot
c) Violin Plot

a) Bar Plot

Bar charts can be used to contrast between categories where their heights represent some value specific to that category.

from matplotlib.pyplot import figure
figure(figsize=(10, 7))
 

plt.bar(np.sort(data.unique()), data.value_counts().sort_index(), 
        alpha=0.7) # You might need to sort; Be carefully with
                   # which values are being plotted with each 
                   # other.

 
plt.xlabel("Target  ->")
plt.ylabel("Frequency  ->");

(Tip #7)

12) If you have patch or object whose property you want to change, given in output of every matplotlib and seaborn functions, you can either change it by using .set function passing property name as string and property value to it, or you can directly use set function for that property like set_color, set_lw, etc.

F] There are nearly 8% men who are colorblind, nearly 1 in 10 and 0.5% of women. But still you should look out for them. Orange-Blue contrasts works for most of them.

# Seaborn
from matplotlib.pyplot import figure
figure(figsize=(10, 7))
 
sns.barplot(np.sort(data.unique()),data.value_counts().sort_index())

 
plt.xlabel("Target  ->")
plt.ylabel("Frequency  ->");

from matplotlib.pyplot import figure
figure(figsize=(10, 7))

 

plt.bar(np.sort(train_df['target_int'].unique()), 
        train_df['target_int'].value_counts().sort_index(), 
        alpha=0.7, width=0.6)
 

plt.grid(True, alpha=0.3)
plt.xlabel("Target  ->", fontsize=14)
plt.ylabel("Frequency  ->", fontsize=14)
plt.title("Target Frequencies", fontsize=18)
 

# Remove top and left spines:
ax = plt.gca() # Get current axis (gca)
ax.spines['right'].set_visible(False)
ax.spines['top'].set_visible(False)
 

# Adding annotations:
counts = train_df['target_int'].value_counts().sort_index()
plt.annotate(str(counts[0]), xy=(0, counts[0]), 
             xytext=(0,counts[0]+400), ha = 'center',
             bbox={'boxstyle': 'round', 'pad': 0.5, 'facecolor': 
                   'orange', 'edgecolor': 'orange', 'alpha': 0.6},
             arrowprops={'arrowstyle':"wedge,tail_width=0.5", 
                         'alpha':0.6, 'color': 'orange'})
plt.annotate(str(counts[1]), xy=(1, counts[1]), 
             xytext=(1, counts[1]+400), ha = 'center',
             bbox={'boxstyle': 'round', 'pad': 0.5, 'facecolor': 
                   'orange', 'edgecolor': 'orange', 'alpha': 0.6},
             arrowprops={'arrowstyle':"wedge,tail_width=0.5", 
                         'alpha':0.6, 'color': 'orange'})
plt.annotate(str(counts[2]), xy=(2, counts[2]), 
             xytext=(2, counts[2]+400), ha = 'center',
             bbox={'boxstyle': 'round', 'pad': 0.5, 'facecolor': 
                   'orange', 'edgecolor': 'orange', 'alpha': 0.6},
             arrowprops={'arrowstyle':"wedge,tail_width=0.5", 
                         'alpha':0.6, 'color': 'orange'})
plt.annotate(str(counts[3]), xy=(3, counts[3]), 
             xytext=(3, counts[3]+400), ha = 'center',
             bbox={'boxstyle': 'round', 'pad': 0.5, 'facecolor': 
                   'orange', 'edgecolor': 'orange', 'alpha': 0.6},
             arrowprops={'arrowstyle':"wedge,tail_width=0.5", 
                         'alpha':0.6, 'color': 'orange'})
plt.annotate(str(counts[4]), xy=(4, counts[4]), 
             xytext=(4, counts[4]+400), ha = 'center',
             bbox={'boxstyle': 'round', 'pad': 0.5, 'facecolor': 
                   'orange', 'edgecolor': 'orange', 'alpha': 0.6},
             arrowprops={'arrowstyle':"wedge,tail_width=0.5", 
                         'alpha':0.6, 'color': 'orange'})
plt.xticks(ticks=[0, 1, 2, 3, 4], labels=["0 - 1", "1 - 2", "2 - 3",      
           "3 - 4", "4 - 5"], fontsize=12)
plt.ylim([0, 9500]);

Storytelling With Matplotlib (SWMat)

swm = SWMat(plt)
swm.bar(cats, heights, highlight={"cat": [-1]}, highlight_type=
        {"data_type": "incrementalDown"}, cat_labels=["0-1", "1-2",
        "2-3", "3-4", "4-5"], highlight_color={"cat_color":
        "#FF7700"}, annotate=True)
swm.axis(labels=["Target values", "Frequency"])
swm.title("About most expensive houses in California...")
swm.text("California is a sea-side state. As most\nexpensive houses 
         are at sea-side we\ncan easily predict these values if 
         we\nsomehow <prop color='blue'>combine 'Latitude' 
         and\n'Longitude' variables </prop>and separate sea\nside 
         houses from non-sea-side houses.",
         btw_text_dist=.1);

1) Normal Matplotlib, 2) Seaborn, 3) Matplotlib Power, 4) Storytelling With Matplotlib

b) Box Plot

Box plot is a statistical version of distribution plot. It gives us range of different quartiles, mean, and extremas. Some possible use-case can be that with it you can identify variables in which you can find outliers if some points are way out of box-whisker’s range, or you can check for skew in distribution by relative placement of middle box in plot.

from matplotlib.pyplot import figure
figure(figsize=(15, 7))

 

plt.boxplot(train_df['target'], vert=False)

 

plt.xlabel("<-  Target Values  ->")
plt.ylabel("Target");

# With Seaborn:
from matplotlib.pyplot import figure
figure(figsize=(15, 7))
 
sns.boxplot(train_df['MedInc']);

(Tip #8 )

13) You can change x-limit, y-limit of your Axes by using functions plt.xlim, plt.ylim, ax.set_xlim, ax.set_ylim. You can also zoom in and out of your plot by using plt.margings or ax.margins as plt.margins(x=2, y=-3).

14) You can use different styles for your plots from plt.style.available to give a different look to your plot, and activate them as plt.style.use(stylename). Most used styles are 'fivethirtyeight' and ggplot.

15) seaborn and matplotlib has many colormaps available which you can use to set color in plots for continuous variables. You can look for them here and here.

G] Highlight only the components of plot where you want your audience’s attention, and those parts only.

from matplotlib.pyplot import figure
figure(figsize=(20, 7))
 

bp = plt.boxplot([x1, x2], vert=False, patch_artist=True,
              flierprops={'alpha':0.6, 'markersize': 6,
                   'markeredgecolor': '#555555','marker': 'd',
                   'markerfacecolor': "#555555"}, 
              capprops={'color': '#555555', 'linewidth': 2},
              boxprops={'color': '#555555', 'linewidth': 2},
              whiskerprops={'color': '#555555', 'linewidth': 2},
              medianprops={'color': '#555555', 'linewidth': 2},
              meanprops={'color': '#555555', 'linewidth': 2})

plt.grid(True, alpha=0.6)
plt.title("Box Plots", fontsize=18)
plt.xlabel("Values ->", fontsize=14)
plt.ylabel("Features", fontsize=14)
plt.yticks(ticks=[1, 2], labels=['MedInc', 'Target'])

bp['boxes'][0].set(facecolor='#727FFF')
bp['boxes'][1].set(facecolor="#97FF67")

# Adding Text:
plt.text(11, 1.5, "There are many potential\nOutliers with respect
to\nMedian Income", fontsize=18,
bbox={'facecolor': 'orange', 'edgecolor': 'orange',
'alpha': 0.4, 'pad': 8});

Storytelling With Matplotlib (SWMat)

swm = SWMat(plt)
bp = plt.boxplot([x1, x2], vert=False, patch_artist=True,
              flierprops={'alpha':0.6, 'markersize': 6,
                   'markeredgecolor': '#555555','marker': 'd',
                   'markerfacecolor': "#555555"}, 
              capprops={'color': '#555555', 'linewidth': 2},
              boxprops={'color': '#555555', 'linewidth': 2},
              whiskerprops={'color': '#555555', 'linewidth': 2},
              medianprops={'color': '#555555', 'linewidth': 2},
              meanprops={'color': '#555555', 'linewidth': 2})
plt.xlabel("Values  ->", fontsize=14)
plt.ylabel("Features", fontsize=14)
plt.yticks(ticks=[1, 2], labels=['MedInc', 'Target'])
bp['boxes'][0].set(facecolor='#727FFF')
bp['boxes'][1].set(facecolor="#97FF67");
 

swm.title("Many unusual outliers in 'MedInc' variable...")
swm.text(("It may be because of acquisition of sea side\n"
        "places by very wealthy people. This <prop 
           color='blue'>aquisition\n"
        "by many times greater earners</prop> and yet not much\n"
        "number has made box plot like this."),btw_line_dist=.15,    
         btw_text_dist=.01)

1) Normal Matplotlib, 2) Seaborn, 3) Matplotlib Power, 4) Storytelling With Matplotlib

c) Violin Plot

Violin plot are extension of Box plot. It also has indicators of mean, extremas, and possibly different quartiles too. In addition to these it also shows probability distribution of the variable, on both sides.

from matplotlib.pyplot import figure
figure(figsize=(10, 7))
 
plt.violinplot(train_df['target'])

plt.title("Target Violin Plot")
plt.ylabel("Target values ->");

# With Seaborn
from matplotlib.pyplot import figure
figure(figsize=(10, 7))

sns.violinplot(train_df['target']);

Make your Data Talk!

4. Categorical Plots

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