Data Visualization with Pandas
Introduction
It is seldom a good idea to present your scientific or business data solely in rows and columns of numbers. We rather use various kinds of diagrams to visualize our data. This makes the communication of information more efficiently and easy to grasp. In other words, it makes complex data more accessible and understandable. The numerical data can be graphically encoded with line charts, bar charts, pie charts, histograms, scatterplots and others.
We have already seen the powerful capabilities of for creating publication-quality plots. Matplotlib is a low-level tool to achieve this goal, because you have to construe your plots by adding up basic components, like legends, tick labels, contours and so on. Pandas provides various plotting possibilities, which make like a lot easier.
We will start with an example for a line plot.
Line Plot in Pandas
Series
Both the Pandas Series and DataFrame objects support a plot method.
You can see a simple example of a line plot with for a Series object. We use a simple Python list "data" as the data for the range. The index will be used for the x values, or the domain.
import pandas as pd data = [100, 120, 140, 180, 200, 210, 214] s = pd.Series(data, index=range(len(data))) s.plot()This gets us the following:
<matplotlib.axes._subplots.AxesSubplot at 0x7f6cf488c3c8>
It is possible to suppress the usage of the index by setting the keyword parameter "use_index" to False. In our example this will give us the same result:
s.plot(use_index=False)The above Python code returned the following output:
<matplotlib.axes._subplots.AxesSubplot at 0x7f6cf4048828>
We will experiment now with a Series which has an index consisting of alphabetical values.
fruits = ['apples', 'oranges', 'cherries', 'pears'] quantities = [20, 33, 52, 10] S = pd.Series(quantities, index=fruits) S.plot()The above code returned the following output:
<matplotlib.axes._subplots.AxesSubplot at 0x7f6cf419dd30>
Line Plots in DataFrames
We will introduce now the plot method of a DataFrame. We define a dcitionary with the population and area figures. This dictionary can be used to create the DataFrame, which we want to use for plotting:
import pandas as pd cities = {"name": ["London", "Berlin", "Madrid", "Rome", "Paris", "Vienna", "Bucharest", "Hamburg", "Budapest", "Warsaw", "Barcelona", "Munich", "Milan"], "population": [8615246, 3562166, 3165235, 2874038, 2273305, 1805681, 1803425, 1760433, 1754000, 1740119, 1602386, 1493900, 1350680], "area" : [1572, 891.85, 605.77, 1285, 105.4, 414.6, 228, 755, 525.2, 517, 101.9, 310.4, 181.8] } city_frame = pd.DataFrame(cities, columns=["population", "area"], index=cities["name"]) print(city_frame)
population area London 8615246 1572.00 Berlin 3562166 891.85 Madrid 3165235 605.77 Rome 2874038 1285.00 Paris 2273305 105.40 Vienna 1805681 414.60 Bucharest 1803425 228.00 Hamburg 1760433 755.00 Budapest 1754000 525.20 Warsaw 1740119 517.00 Barcelona 1602386 101.90 Munich 1493900 310.40 Milan 1350680 181.80
The following code plots our DataFrame city_frame. We will multiply the area column by 1000, because otherwise the "area" line would not be visible or in other words would be overlapping with the x axis:
city_frame["area"] *= 1000 city_frame.plot()The above code returned the following output:
<matplotlib.axes._subplots.AxesSubplot at 0x7f6cf3f55518>
This plot is not coming up to our expectations, because not all the city names appear on the x axis. We can change this by defining the xticks explicitly with "range(len((city_frame.index))". Furthermore, we have to set use_index to True, so that we get city names and not numbers from 0 to len((city_frame.index):
city_frame.plot(xticks=range(len(city_frame.index)), use_index=True)The previous Python code returned the following output:
<matplotlib.axes._subplots.AxesSubplot at 0x7f6cf3f40c18>
Now, we have a new problem. The city names are overlapping. There is remedy at hand for this problem as well. We can rotate the strings by 90 degrees. The names will be printed vertically afterwards:
city_frame.plot(xticks=range(len(city_frame.index)), use_index=True, rot=90)The above code returned the following result:
<matplotlib.axes._subplots.AxesSubplot at 0x7f6cf3e7f550>
Using Twin Axes
We multiplied the area column by 1000 to get a proper output. Instead of this, we could have used twin axes. We will demonstrate this in the following example. We will recreate the city_frame DataFrame to get the original area column:
city_frame = pd.DataFrame(cities, columns=["population", "area"], index=cities["name"]) print(city_frame)
population area London 8615246 1572.00 Berlin 3562166 891.85 Madrid 3165235 605.77 Rome 2874038 1285.00 Paris 2273305 105.40 Vienna 1805681 414.60 Bucharest 1803425 228.00 Hamburg 1760433 755.00 Budapest 1754000 525.20 Warsaw 1740119 517.00 Barcelona 1602386 101.90 Munich 1493900 310.40 Milan 1350680 181.80
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt fig, ax = plt.subplots() fig.suptitle("City Statistics") ax.set_ylabel("Population") ax.set_xlabel("Citites") ax2 = ax.twinx() ax2.set_ylabel("Area") city_frame["population"].plot(ax=ax, style="b-", use_index=True, rot=90) city_frame["area"].plot(ax=ax2, style="g-", use_index=True, rot=90)After having executed the Python code above we received the following output:
<matplotlib.axes._subplots.AxesSubplot at 0x7f6cf3d700f0>
Multiple Y Axes
Let's add another axes to our city_frame. We will add a column with the population density, i.e. the number of people per square kilometre:
city_frame["density"] = city_frame["population"] / city_frame["area"] city_frameThe above Python code returned the following:
| population | area | density | |
|---|---|---|---|
| London | 8615246 | 1572.00 | 5480.436387 |
| Berlin | 3562166 | 891.85 | 3994.131300 |
| Madrid | 3165235 | 605.77 | 5225.143206 |
| Rome | 2874038 | 1285.00 | 2236.605447 |
| Paris | 2273305 | 105.40 | 21568.358634 |
| Vienna | 1805681 | 414.60 | 4355.236372 |
| Bucharest | 1803425 | 228.00 | 7909.758772 |
| Hamburg | 1760433 | 755.00 | 2331.699338 |
| Budapest | 1754000 | 525.20 | 3339.680122 |
| Warsaw | 1740119 | 517.00 | 3365.800774 |
| Barcelona | 1602386 | 101.90 | 15725.083415 |
| Munich | 1493900 | 310.40 | 4812.822165 |
| Milan | 1350680 | 181.80 | 7429.482948 |
Now we have three columns to plot. For this purpose, we will create three axes for our values:
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt fig, ax = plt.subplots() fig.suptitle("City Statistics") ax.set_ylabel("Population") ax.set_xlabel("Citites") ax_area, ax_density = ax.twinx(), ax.twinx() ax_area.set_ylabel("Area") ax_density.set_ylabel("Density") rspine = ax_density.spines['right'] rspine.set_position(('axes', 1.25)) ax_density.set_frame_on(True) ax_density.patch.set_visible(False) fig.subplots_adjust(right=0.75) city_frame["population"].plot(ax=ax, style="b-", use_index=True, rot=90) city_frame["area"].plot(ax=ax_area, style="g-", use_index=True, rot=90) city_frame["density"].plot(ax=ax_density, style="r-", use_index=True, rot=90)The previous Python code returned the following result:
<matplotlib.axes._subplots.AxesSubplot at 0x7f6cf3c7d6a0>
A More Complex Example
We use the previously gained knowledge in the following example. We use a file with visitor statistics from our website python-course.eu. The content of the file looks like this:
Month Year "Unique visitors" "Number of visits" Pages Hits Bandwidth Unit Jun 2010 11 13 42 290 2.63 MB Jul 2010 27 39 232 939 9.42 MB Aug 2010 75 87 207 1,096 17.37 MB Sep 2010 171 221 480 2,373 39.63 MB ... Nov 2016 234,518 374,641 832,244 4,378,623 167.68 GB Dec 2016 209,367 323,845 598,081 3,627,830 145.41 GB Jan 2017 219,153 346,011 633,984 3,827,909 158.36 GB Feb 2017 255,869 409,503 752,516 4,630,365 189.43 GB Mar 2017 284,557 467,802 891,505 5,306,521 221.30 GB
%matplotlib inline import pandas as pd data_path = "data1/" data = pd.read_csv(data_path + "python_course_monthly_history.txt", quotechar='"', thousands=",", delimiter=r"\s+") def unit_convert(x): value, unit = x if unit == "MB": value *= 1024 elif unit == "GB": value *= 1048576 # i.e. 1024 **2 return value b_and_u= data[["Bandwidth", "Unit"]] bandwidth = b_and_u.apply(unit_convert, axis=1) del data["Unit"] data["Bandwidth"] = bandwidth month_year = data[["Month", "Year"]] month_year = month_year.apply(lambda x: x[0] + " " + str(x[1]), axis=1) data["Month"] = month_year del data["Year"] data.set_index("Month", inplace=True) del data["Bandwidth"] data[["Unique visitors", "Number of visits"]].plot(use_index=True, rot=90)We received the following output:
<matplotlib.axes._subplots.AxesSubplot at 0x7f6cf3c43198>
ratio = pd.Series(data["Number of visits"] / data["Unique visitors"], index=data.index) ratio.plot(use_index=True, rot=90)The above code returned the following:
<matplotlib.axes._subplots.AxesSubplot at 0x7f6cf3bd5cc0>
Converting String Columns to Floats
In the folder "data1", we have a file called programming_language_usage.txt with a ranking of programming languages by usage. The data has been collected and created by TIOBE in March 2017.
The file looks like this:
"Mar 2017" "Language" Percentage 1 Java 16.384% 2 C 7.742% 3 C++ 5.184% 4 C# 4.409% 5 Python 3.919% 6 Visual Basic .NET 3.174% 7 PHP 3.009% 8 JavaScript 2.667% 9 Delphi/Object Pascal 2.544%
The percentage column contains strings with a percentage sign. We can get rid of this when we read in the data with read_csv. All we have to do is define a converter function, which we to read_csv via the converters dictionary, which contains column names as keys and references to functions as values.
def strip_percentage_sign(x): return float(x.strip('%')) data_path = "data1/" progs = pd.read_csv(data_path + "programming_language_usage.txt", quotechar='"', thousands=",", index_col=1, converters={'Percentage':strip_percentage_sign}, delimiter=r"\s+") del progs["Mar 2017"] print(progs) progs.plot(xticks=range(len(progs.index)), use_index=True, rot=90)
Percentage Language Java 16.384 C 7.742 C++ 5.184 C# 4.409 Python 3.919 Visual Basic .NET 3.174 PHP 3.009 JavaScript 2.667 Delphi/Object Pascal 2.544 Swift 2.268 Perl 2.261 Ruby 2.254 Assembly language 2.232 R 2.016 Visual Basic 2.008 Objective-C 1.997 Go 1.982 MATLAB 1.854 PL/SQL 1.672 Scratch 1.472The above code returned the following:
<matplotlib.axes._subplots.AxesSubplot at 0x7f6cf3bb8940>
Bar Plots in Pandas
To create bar plots with Pandas is as easy as plotting line plots. All we have to do is add the keyword parameter "kind" to the plot method and set it to "bar".
A Simple Example
import pandas as pd data = [100, 120, 140, 180, 200, 210, 214] s = pd.Series(data, index=range(len(data))) s.plot(kind="bar")After having executed the Python code above we received the following result:
<matplotlib.axes._subplots.AxesSubplot at 0x7f6cf3aa4cf8>
Bar Plot for Programming Language Usage
Let's get back to our programming language ranking. We will printout now a bar plot of the six most used programming languages:
progs[:6].plot(kind="bar")The above code returned the following:
<matplotlib.axes._subplots.AxesSubplot at 0x7f6cf3a54da0>
Now the whole chart with all programming languages:
progs.plot(kind="bar")We received the following result:
<matplotlib.axes._subplots.AxesSubplot at 0x7f6cf39cd1d0>
Colorize A Bar Plot
It is possible to colorize the bars indivually by assigning a list to the keyword parameter color:
my_colors = ['b', 'r', 'c', 'y', 'g', 'm'] progs[:6].plot(kind="bar", color=my_colors)After having executed the Python code above we received the following output:
<matplotlib.axes._subplots.AxesSubplot at 0x7f6cf39805c0>
Pie Chart Diagrams in Pandas
A simple example:
import pandas as pd fruits = ['apples', 'pears', 'cherries', 'bananas'] series = pd.Series([20, 30, 40, 10], index=fruits, name='series') series.plot.pie(figsize=(6, 6))The previous code returned the following:
<matplotlib.axes._subplots.AxesSubplot at 0x7f6cf39b8b70>
fruits = ['apples', 'pears', 'cherries', 'bananas'] series = pd.Series([20, 30, 40, 10], index=fruits, name='series') explode = [0, 0.10, 0.40, 0.7] series.plot.pie(figsize=(6, 6), explode=explode)We received the following output:
<matplotlib.axes._subplots.AxesSubplot at 0x7f6cf3883f28>
We will replot the previous bar plot as a pie chart plot:
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt my_colors = ['b', 'r', 'c', 'y', 'g', 'm'] progs.plot.pie(subplots=True, legend=False)The previous Python code returned the following:
array([<matplotlib.axes._subplots.AxesSubplot object at 0x7f6cf37e6438>], dtype=object)
It looks ugly that we see the y label "Percentage" inside our pie plot. We can remove it by calling "plt.ylabel('')"
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt my_colors = ['b', 'r', 'c', 'y', 'g', 'm'] progs.plot.pie(subplots=True, legend=False) plt.ylabel('')The above Python code returned the following output:
<matplotlib.text.Text at 0x7f6cf36da828>
