"""Examples illustrating the use of plt.subplots().
This function creates a figure and a grid of subplots with a single call, while
providing reasonable control over how the individual plots are created. For
very refined tuning of subplot creation, you can still use add_subplot()
directly on a new figure.
"""
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
# Simple data to display in various forms
x = np.linspace(0, 2 * np.pi, 400)
y = np.sin(x ** 2)
plt.close('all')
# Just a figure and one subplot
f, ax = plt.subplots()
ax.plot(x, y)
ax.set_title('Simple plot')
# Two subplots, the axes array is 1-d
f, axarr = plt.subplots(2, sharex=True)
axarr[0].plot(x, y)
axarr[0].set_title('Sharing X axis')
axarr[1].scatter(x, y)
# Two subplots, unpack the axes array immediately
f, (ax1, ax2) = plt.subplots(1, 2, sharey=True)
ax1.plot(x, y)
ax1.set_title('Sharing Y axis')
ax2.scatter(x, y)
# Three subplots sharing both x/y axes
f, (ax1, ax2, ax3) = plt.subplots(3, sharex=True, sharey=True)
ax1.plot(x, y)
ax1.set_title('Sharing both axes')
ax2.scatter(x, y)
ax3.scatter(x, 2 * y ** 2 - 1, color='r')
# Fine-tune figure; make subplots close to each other and hide x ticks for
# all but bottom plot.
f.subplots_adjust(hspace=0)
plt.setp([a.get_xticklabels() for a in f.axes[:-1]], visible=False)
# row and column sharing
f, ((ax1, ax2), (ax3, ax4)) = plt.subplots(2, 2, sharex='col', sharey='row')
ax1.plot(x, y)
ax1.set_title('Sharing x per column, y per row')
ax2.scatter(x, y)
ax3.scatter(x, 2 * y ** 2 - 1, color='r')
ax4.plot(x, 2 * y ** 2 - 1, color='r')
# Four axes, returned as a 2-d array
f, axarr = plt.subplots(2, 2)
axarr[0, 0].plot(x, y)
axarr[0, 0].set_title('Axis [0,0]')
axarr[0, 1].scatter(x, y)
axarr[0, 1].set_title('Axis [0,1]')
axarr[1, 0].plot(x, y ** 2)
axarr[1, 0].set_title('Axis [1,0]')
axarr[1, 1].scatter(x, y ** 2)
axarr[1, 1].set_title('Axis [1,1]')
# Fine-tune figure; hide x ticks for top plots and y ticks for right plots
plt.setp([a.get_xticklabels() for a in axarr[0, :]], visible=False)
plt.setp([a.get_yticklabels() for a in axarr[:, 1]], visible=False)
# Four polar axes
f, axarr = plt.subplots(2, 2, subplot_kw=dict(projection='polar'))
axarr[0, 0].plot(x, y)
axarr[0, 0].set_title('Axis [0,0]')
axarr[0, 1].scatter(x, y)
axarr[0, 1].set_title('Axis [0,1]')
axarr[1, 0].plot(x, y ** 2)
axarr[1, 0].set_title('Axis [1,0]')
axarr[1, 1].scatter(x, y ** 2)
axarr[1, 1].set_title('Axis [1,1]')
# Fine-tune figure; make subplots farther from each other.
f.subplots_adjust(hspace=0.3)
plt.show()
Keywords: python, matplotlib, pylab, example, codex (see Search examples)