How to make bar plot of a list in Python

Question

I have a list that has counts of some values and I want to make a bar plot to see the counts as bars. The list is like:

print(lii)
# Output
[46, 11, 9, 20, 3, 15, 8, 63, 11, 9, 24, 3, 5, 45, 51, 2, 23, 9, 17, 1, 1, 37, 29, 6, 3, 9, 25, 5, 43]

I want something like this plot with each list value as a bar and its value on top:

I tried the following code but it plotted the list as a series:

plt.figure(figsize=(30, 10))
plt.plot(lii)
plt.show()

Any help is appreciated.

use plt.bar() instead of plt.plot() matplotlib.org/stable/api/_as_gen/matplotlib.pyplot.bar.html — user2261062
– user2261062, Commented Mar 2, 2022 at 13:25
TypeError: bar() missing 1 required positional argument: 'height' — user17978261
– user17978261, Commented Mar 2, 2022 at 13:32
did you look at the documentation of bar and provide an array for the x axis and an array for y axis right? Using bar instead of plot doesn;t mean replacing literally plot for bar, it means reading what bar does and adapting your code to use this new function — user2261062
– user2261062, Commented Mar 2, 2022 at 13:32

Mehrad · Accepted Answer · 2025-06-05 11:05:16Z

5

I believe you want something like this:

import seaborn as sns
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np

ax = sns.barplot(x=np.arange(len(lii)), y=lii)
ax.bar_label(ax.containers[0])
plt.axis('off')
plt.show()

edited Jun 5 at 11:05

Mehrad

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answered Mar 2, 2022 at 13:47

hajben

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Comments

seb007 · Accepted Answer · 2022-03-02 14:28:21Z

3

You can do it using matplotlib pyplot bar.

This example considers that lii is the list of values to be counted.

If you already have the list of unique values and associated counts, you do not have to compute lii_unique and counts.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

lii = [46, 11, 9, 20, 3, 15, 8, 63, 11, 9, 24, 3, 5, 45, 51, 2, 23, 9, 17, 1, 1, 37, 29, 6, 3, 9, 25, 5, 43]

# This is a list of unique values appearing in the input list
lii_unique = list(set(lii))

# This is the corresponding count for each value
counts = [lii.count(value) for value in lii_unique]

barcontainer = plt.bar(range(len(lii_unique)),counts)

# Some labels and formatting to look more like the example
plt.bar_label(barcontainer,lii_unique, label_type='edge')
plt.axis('off')
plt.show()

Here is the output. The label above each bar is the value itself, while the length of the bar is the count for this value. For example, value 9 has the highest bar because it appears 4 times in the list.

edited Mar 2, 2022 at 14:28

answered Mar 2, 2022 at 13:34

seb007

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3 Comments

user17978261 Over a year ago

Don't you think the first item of list (46) should have the highest bar and then others?

user17978261 Over a year ago

Anyways, thanks for the answer :)

seb007 Over a year ago

I was not sure what was the lii list. Since your question provides a single list rather than a list of values + a list of counts, I assumed (wrongly?) that lii was the list of values to be counted. If you already have the list of unique values and associated counts, you do not have to compute lii_unique and counts but the answer remains valid.

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