Line, Bar and Scatter Plots
Create common chart types.
Three Workhorse Charts
Most data stories are told with three chart types:
- Line for trends over an ordered axis like time
- Bar for comparing categories
- Scatter for relationships between two numeric variables
Each maps to one Matplotlib method on an axes.
Line Plots
A line plot connects points in order. In Matplotlib it is ax.plot(x, y). Use it when the x-axis has a meaningful order, such as days or measurements over time.
The data behind a line is just two parallel sequences.
months = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
sales = [120, 150, 130, 170, 200]
for m, s in zip(months, sales):
print('Month', m, '->', s)
print('Trend:', 'up' if sales[-1] > sales[0] else 'down')All lessons in this course
- Figures and Axes
- Line, Bar and Scatter Plots
- Customizing Plots
- Subplots and Layouts