Learn Axes Customization | Plots Customization

Ticks Customization

To customize ticks, use:

xticks for the x-axis,
yticks for the y-axis.

Both accept:

ticks — positions of ticks (empty list removes ticks);
labels — custom text for those positions.

Additional keyword arguments let you style tick labels (e.g., rotation, font size).

Below is a plot using these tools:

Everything seems to be pretty fine with this plot, however, it would be better to have more years on the x-axis in this range (1995-2020). Let's use xticks() for this purpose:


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import pandas as pd
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

url = 'https://staging-content-media-cdn.codefinity.com/courses/47339f29-4722-4e72-a0d4-6112c70ff738/weather_data.csv'
weather_df = pd.read_csv(url, index_col=0)

plt.plot(weather_df['Boston'], label='Boston')
plt.plot(weather_df['Seattle'], label='Seattle')

plt.title('Boston and Seattle average yearly temperatures')
plt.legend(loc='upper left')

plt.xticks(range(1995, 2021, 2), rotation=30)

plt.show()

Every second year is displayed on the x-axis thanks to range(1995, 2021, 2). Labels are rotated 30° for readability. Tick labels can also be manually set by passing a list to labels.

Axes Labels Customization

Use xlabel() and ylabel() to set axis labels. Each takes a single string.


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import pandas as pd
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

url = 'https://content-media-cdn.codefinity.com/courses/47339f29-4722-4e72-a0d4-6112c70ff738/weather_data.csv'
weather_df = pd.read_csv(url, index_col=0)

plt.plot(weather_df['Boston'], label='Boston')
plt.plot(weather_df['Seattle'], label='Seattle')

plt.title('Boston and Seattle average yearly temperatures')
plt.legend(loc='upper left')
plt.xticks(range(1995, 2021, 2), rotation=30)
plt.ylabel('Temperature, °F')

plt.show()

You can style labels with options such as fontsize and color. The loc argument controls label placement:

For x-labels: 'left', 'center', 'right';
For y-labels: 'top', 'center', 'bottom'.

Study More

You can explore more in the documentation: xlabel() and ylabel().

Task

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Use the correct function to set data_linear as x-axis ticks.
Use the correct function to set 'x' as the x-axis label.
Use 'right' as the location for the x-axis label.
Use the correct function to set 'y' as the y-axis label.
Use 'top' as the location for the y-axis label.
Set rotation parameter to 0 for the y-axis label.

Solution

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Section 3. Chapter 3

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