102

How do I plot a block of histograms from a group of data in a dataframe? For example, given:

from pandas import DataFrame
import numpy as np
x = ['A']*300 + ['B']*400 + ['C']*300
y = np.random.randn(1000)
df = DataFrame({'Letter': x, 'N': y})

I tried:

df.groupby('Letter').hist()

...which failed with the error message:

TypeError: cannot concatenate 'str' and 'float' objects

6 Answers 6

266

I'm on a roll, just found an even simpler way to do it using the by keyword in the hist method:

df.hist('N', by='Letter')

That's a very handy little shortcut for quickly scanning your grouped data!

For future visitors, the product of this call is the following chart:

output of hist plot command

In answer to questions below, here's an example of specific tailoring of the histogram plots:

# import libraries
import pandas as pd
import numpy as np

# Create test dataframe
x = ['A']*300 + ['B']*400 + ['C']*300
y = np.random.randn(1000)
z = np.random.randn(1000)
df = pd.DataFrame({'Letter':x, 'N1':y, 'N2':z})

# Plot histograms
axes = df.hist(['N1','N2'], by='Letter',bins=10, layout=(2,2),
               legend=True, yrot=90,sharex=True,sharey=True, 
               log=True, figsize=(6,6))
for ax in axes.flatten():
    ax.set_xlabel('N')
    ax.set_ylabel('Count')
    ax.set_ylim(bottom=1,top=100)

enter image description here

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8 Comments

Is there a way to get these in the same plot?
For a larger plot; df['N'].hist(by=df['Letter']), figsize = (16,18))
df.groupby('age').survived.value_counts().unstack().plot.bar(width=1, stacked=True)) I've found a code that plot all in the same plot.
@dreme what if I am doing this on an entire dataframe, I am trying to do random_sample_join.hist(bins=5, figsize=(20, 20), rwidth=5, by = random_sample_join['x']) but it doesn't work, gives me some really weird looking graph that makes no sense
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14

One solution is to use matplotlib histogram directly on each grouped data frame. You can loop through the groups obtained in a loop. Each group is a dataframe. And you can create a histogram for each one.

from pandas import DataFrame
import numpy as np
x = ['A']*300 + ['B']*400 + ['C']*300
y = np.random.randn(1000)
df = DataFrame({'Letter':x, 'N':y})
grouped = df.groupby('Letter')

for group in grouped:
  figure()
  matplotlib.pyplot.hist(group[1].N)
  show()

4 Comments

Thanks too Paul. I'm a little mystified about the '[1]' in 'group[1].N'. Each 'group' seems to be a DF with just two columns (Letter and N) when I added a 'print group' statement in the for loop. In that case, shouldn't 'group.N' suffice?
Ah, actually belay that comment, just figured it out. Each 'group' is actually a two element tuple of the group name and the group DF. Doh!
I recommend splitting the tuple in the for loop: for index, group in grouped, then you can omit the [1].
matplotlib.pyplot.figure() and matplotlib.pyplot.show() should come off the loop.
10

With recent version of Pandas, you can do df.N.hist(by=df.Letter)

Just like with the solutions above, the axes will be different for each subplot. I have not solved that one yet.

1 Comment

You can use the sharex and sharey keywords to get common axes for your plots, i.e.: df.N.hist(by=df.Letter, sharey=True, sharex=True)
9

Your function is failing because the groupby dataframe you end up with has a hierarchical index and two columns (Letter and N) so when you do .hist() it's trying to make a histogram of both columns hence the str error.

This is the default behavior of pandas plotting functions (one plot per column) so if you reshape your data frame so that each letter is a column you will get exactly what you want.

df.reset_index().pivot('index','Letter','N').hist()

The reset_index() is just to shove the current index into a column called index. Then pivot will take your data frame, collect all of the values N for each Letter and make them a column. The resulting data frame as 400 rows (fills missing values with NaN) and three columns (A, B, C). hist() will then produce one histogram per column and you get format the plots as needed.

2 Comments

When I follow this I don't get my plots by an array of them. Is this do to some error in my approach? I get an array of matplotlib.axes.AxesSubplot object at 0x246c5fe10 items. Is there some way to get these to display, say 3 or 4 per row?
If you're using an ipython notebook, then run either the %pylab or %matplotlib magic functions to automatically display the plots
2

I find this even easier and faster.

data_df.groupby('Letter').count()['N'].hist(bins=100)

Comments

1

I write this answer because I was looking for a way to plot together the histograms of different groups. What follows is not very smart, but it works fine for me. I use Numpy to compute the histogram and Bokeh for plotting. I think it is self-explanatory, but feel free to ask for clarifications and I'll be happy to add details (and write it better).

figures = {
    'Transit': figure(title='Transit', x_axis_label='speed [km/h]', y_axis_label='frequency'),
    'Driving': figure(title='Driving', x_axis_label='speed [km/h]', y_axis_label='frequency')
}

cols = {'Vienna': 'red', 'Turin': 'blue', 'Rome': 'Orange'}
for gr in df_trips.groupby(['locality', 'means']):
    locality = gr[0][0]
    means = gr[0][1]
    fig = figures[means]
    h, b = np.histogram(pd.DataFrame(gr[1]).speed.values)
    fig.vbar(x=b[1:], top=h, width=(b[1]-b[0]), legend_label=locality, fill_color=cols[locality], alpha=0.5)

show(gridplot([
    [figures['Transit']],
    [figures['Driving']],
]))

Comments

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