In pandas, how to plot with multiple index?

Question

I have double index in Panda's dataframe like the example below.

           c         d
a  b         
1  3   1.519970 -0.493662
2  4   0.600178  0.274230
3  5   0.132885 -0.023688
4  6   2.410179  1.450520

How do I plot column 'c' as y-axis and index 'b' as x-axis. With one index, it is easy to plot. But I have trouble with multi index plotting. Thank you for any help!!.

Yes. I tried it. I have a very big data set. I was wondering if there is any other way without using reset_index() everytime? Thank you .. — TNorden
– TNorden, Commented Mar 14, 2018 at 23:43
If your dataset is so big that calling reset_index is an issue, you will have much larger issues when actually plotting it; or in other words, do not plot any data that you cannot affort to reshape. — ImportanceOfBeingErnest
– ImportanceOfBeingErnest, Commented Mar 14, 2018 at 23:46
Okay. Thanks for the suggestion. If there is no other way, I will stick with using reset_index(). Really appreciate the help. Thank you guys. — TNorden
– TNorden, Commented Mar 14, 2018 at 23:47

cs95 · Accepted Answer · 2018-05-08 00:05:38Z

4

Option 1
Two options have been provided (in the comments) involving reset_index. They are

df.reset_index().plot(x="b",y="c")

Or,

df.reset_index(level=0, drop=True).c.plot()

Both of these should work as expected, but will become expensive for large dataframes.

Option 2
If you are worried about memory, here's an option that does not involve resetting the index:

plt.plot(df.index.get_level_values(1), df.c)

reset_index generates copies of the data. This is more efficient, because it doesn't have to.

edited May 8, 2018 at 0:05

answered Mar 14, 2018 at 23:49

cs95

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