Question :
One of my favorite aspects of using the ggplot2 library in R is the ability to easily specify aesthetics. I can quickly make a scatterplot and apply color associated with a specific column and I would love to be able to do this with python/pandas/matplotlib. I’m wondering if there are there any convenience functions that people use to map colors to values using pandas dataframes and Matplotlib?
##ggplot scatterplot example with R dataframe, `df`, colored by col3
ggplot(data = df, aes(x=col1, y=col2, color=col3)) + geom_point()
##ideal situation with pandas dataframe, 'df', where colors are chosen by col3
df.plot(x=col1,y=col2,color=col3)
EDIT:
Thank you for your responses but I want to include a sample dataframe to clarify what I am asking. Two columns contain numerical data and the third is a categorical variable. The script I am thinking of will assign colors based on this value.
import pandas as pd
df = pd.DataFrame({'Height':np.random.normal(10),
'Weight':np.random.normal(10),
'Gender': ["Male","Male","Male","Male","Male",
"Female","Female","Female","Female","Female"]})
Answer #1:
Update October 2015
Seaborn handles this use-case splendidly:
import numpy
import pandas
from matplotlib import pyplot
import seaborn
seaborn.set(style='ticks')
numpy.random.seed(0)
N = 37
_genders= ['Female', 'Male', 'Non-binary', 'No Response']
df = pandas.DataFrame({
'Height (cm)': numpy.random.uniform(low=130, high=200, size=N),
'Weight (kg)': numpy.random.uniform(low=30, high=100, size=N),
'Gender': numpy.random.choice(_genders, size=N)
})
fg = seaborn.FacetGrid(data=df, hue='Gender', hue_order=_genders, aspect=1.61)
fg.map(pyplot.scatter, 'Weight (kg)', 'Height (cm)').add_legend()
Which immediately outputs:
Old Answer
In this case, I would use matplotlib directly.
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import pandas as pd
def dfScatter(df, xcol='Height', ycol='Weight', catcol='Gender'):
fig, ax = plt.subplots()
categories = np.unique(df[catcol])
colors = np.linspace(0, 1, len(categories))
colordict = dict(zip(categories, colors))
df["Color"] = df[catcol].apply(lambda x: colordict[x])
ax.scatter(df[xcol], df[ycol], c=df.Color)
return fig
if 1:
df = pd.DataFrame({'Height':np.random.normal(size=10),
'Weight':np.random.normal(size=10),
'Gender': ["Male","Male","Unknown","Male","Male",
"Female","Did not respond","Unknown","Female","Female"]})
fig = dfScatter(df)
fig.savefig('fig1.png')
And that gives me:
As far as I know, that color column can be any matplotlib compatible color (RBGA tuples, HTML names, hex values, etc).
I’m having trouble getting anything but numerical values to work with the colormaps.
Answer #2:
Actually you could use ggplot for python:
from ggplot import *
import numpy as np
import pandas as pd
df = pd.DataFrame({'Height':np.random.randn(10),
'Weight':np.random.randn(10),
'Gender': ["Male","Male","Male","Male","Male",
"Female","Female","Female","Female","Female"]})
ggplot(aes(x='Height', y='Weight', color='Gender'), data=df) + geom_point()
Answer #3:
You can use the color parameter to the plot method to define the colors you want for each column. For example:
from pandas import DataFrame
data = DataFrame({'a':range(5),'b':range(1,6),'c':range(2,7)})
colors = ['yellowgreen','cyan','magenta']
data.plot(color=colors)
You can use color names or Color hex codes like ‘#000000’ for black say. You can find all the defined color names in matplotlib’s color.py file. Below is the link for the color.py file in matplotlib’s github repo.
https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/blob/master/lib/matplotlib/colors.py
Answer #4:
https://seaborn.pydata.org/generated/seaborn.scatterplot.html
import numpy
import pandas
import seaborn as sns
numpy.random.seed(0)
N = 37
_genders= ['Female', 'Male', 'Non-binary', 'No Response']
df = pandas.DataFrame({
'Height (cm)': numpy.random.uniform(low=130, high=200, size=N),
'Weight (kg)': numpy.random.uniform(low=30, high=100, size=N),
'Gender': numpy.random.choice(_genders, size=N)
})
sns.scatterplot(data=df, x='Height (cm)', y='Weight (kg)', hue='Gender')
