Figure 5-5. Plot with custom axis limits
For the sake of better readability, a plot usually contains a number of labels — e.g., a title
and labels describing the nature of x and y values. These are added by the functions
plt.title, plt.xlabel, and plt.ylabel, respectively. By default, plot plots continuous
lines, even if discrete data points are provided. The plotting of discrete points is
accomplished by choosing a different style option. Figure 5-6 overlays (red) points and a
(blue) line with line width of 1.5 points:
In [ 8 ]: plt.figure(figsize=( 7 , 4 ))
# the figsize parameter defines the
# size of the figure in (width, height)
plt.plot(y.cumsum(), ‘b’, lw=1.5)
plt.plot(y.cumsum(), ‘ro’)
plt.grid(True)
plt.axis(‘tight’)
plt.xlabel(‘index’)
plt.ylabel(‘value’)
plt.title(‘A Simple Plot’)
Figure 5-6. Plot with typical labels
By default, plt.plot supports the color abbreviations in Table 5-2.
Table 5-2. Standard color abbreviations
Character Color
b
Blue
