Set the color for scatter-plot with DataFrame.plot

Question

I am using python to plot a pandas DataFrame

I set the color for plotting like this:

allDf = pd.DataFrame({
    'x':[0,1,2,4,7,6],
    'y':[0,3,2,4,5,7],
    'a':[1,1,1,0,0,0],
    'c':['red','green','blue','red','green','blue']
},index = ['p1','p2','p3','p4','p5','p6'])

allDf.plot(kind='scatter',x='x',y='y',c='c')
plt.show()

However it doesn't work (every point has a blue color)

If I changed the definition of DataFrame like this

'c':[1,2,1,2,1,2]

It appears color but only black and white, I want to use blue, red and more...

MSeifert · Accepted Answer · 2017-06-09 12:43:29Z

2

Replace it by:

allDf.plot(kind='scatter',x='x',y='y',c=allDf.c)

Output:

edited Jun 9, 2017 at 12:43

MSeifert

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answered Jun 9, 2017 at 12:40

Tbaki

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4 Comments

whitebear Over a year ago

Thank you it works well, but I thought I should pass the name of lines as argumens to plot(). like 'x' and 'y' . Why not like allDf.plot(kind='scatter',x=allDf.x, y=allDf.y, c=allDf.c)

MSeifert Over a year ago

The DataFrame.plot documentation explains what kind of arguments are allowed. For x and y it's "label or position" for most other parameters it simply passes them to matplotlib (so you can't specify them by "label or position").

Tbaki Over a year ago

It's understandable mistake, it all come with practice. :D Like MSeifert said below, you are litterally asking him to use the color 'c':cyan : )

whitebear Over a year ago

I see it's the specification of plot(). I need to get used to it more.

MSeifert · Accepted Answer · 2017-06-09 13:00:15Z

0

The c argument of pandas.DataFrame.plot is in this case passed through literally so everything will have the color 'c' (cyan).

You need to pass your column directly:

allDf.plot(kind='scatter', x='x', y='y', c=allDf['c'])

It's a bit weird and not well documented when the c parameter will use the column and when it will use the literal value. So in this case it's probably best to provide the "colors" explicitly. You might want to take a look at the source code in case you're interested to debug what is happening there.

edited Jun 9, 2017 at 13:00

answered Jun 9, 2017 at 12:44

MSeifert

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1 Comment

Tbaki Over a year ago

I think the c stand for cyan. :D

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