Plot histogram of a large number of integers using matplotlib

Question

I am trying to plot the frequency of integers in a large list of number in a large range. More specifically:

ints = np.random.random_integers(0,1440,15000)

ints is a long list of integers with values between 0 and 1440. Next I want to plot a histogram that will visualize the frequencies. To that end, I use something like:

fig_per_hour = plt.figure()
per_hour = fig_per_hour.add_subplot(111)
counts, bins, patches = per_hour.hist(
    ints, bins = np.arange(0,1441), normed = False, color = 'g',linewidth=0)
plt.show()

But I face two problems:

An annoying gap at the right end of the x-axis. Although I specify the right(?) amount of bins, the plot doesn't reflect it.
Due to the large range from which the ints are sampled, each bar is very thin, and hard to distinct. Is it possible to stretch the x-axis so the bars will be wider? The reason is that I want to annotate the x-axis and some of the bars.

For reference, here's the output I have so far: enter image description here

you can specify plt.xlimits(min,max) to make sure the x-axis limits are within your range. and plt.hist(data, bins = range(min,max+binwidth,binwidth)) to make sure the bins are equally distributed — Srivatsan
– Srivatsan, Commented Oct 2, 2014 at 8:31

Falko · Accepted Answer · 2014-10-02 14:10:08Z

3

I'd use set_xlim and a smaller number of bins, e.g. bins = 100:

from matplotlib import pyplot as plt
import numpy as np

ints = np.random.random_integers(0,1440,15000)

fig_per_hour = plt.figure()
per_hour = fig_per_hour.add_subplot(111)
counts, bins, patches = per_hour.hist(
    ints, bins = 100, normed = False, color = 'g',linewidth=0)
plt.gca().set_xlim(ints.min(), ints.max())
plt.show()

enter image description here

Edit: You can manually resized window:

enter image description here

In principal you can do this programmatically with plt.figure(figsize=(20, 2)). But somehow the window size is limited to the screen size.

edited Oct 2, 2014 at 14:10

answered Oct 2, 2014 at 8:34

Falko

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3 Comments

Dror Over a year ago

This helps a lot, but I'd still like to have enough (=1440) bins. I am interested in the "per minute" behavior over 24hrs period. I don't mind that the width of the resulting image will be huge.

Falko Over a year ago

@Dror: I don't really get the application. Can't you resize the figure window manually? You can also zoom and pan the axes. Or do you need to do it programmatically?

Dror Over a year ago

A programmatic solution would be best for me, as I want to generate images that will be automatically integrated in a document.

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