Plot your first time series

Visualizing Time Series Data in Python

Thomas Vincent

Head of Data Science, Getty Images

The Matplotlib library

In Python, matplotlib is an extensive package used to plot data
The pyplot submodule of matplotlib is traditionally imported using the plt alias

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

Plotting time series data

Your first time series

Plotting time series data

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import pandas as pd

df = df.set_index('date_column')
df.plot()
plt.show()

Adding style to your plots

plt.style.use('fivethirtyeight')
df.plot()
plt.show()

FiveThirtyEight style

A example of using the fivethirtyeight style

Matplotlib style sheets

print(plt.style.available)

['seaborn-dark-palette', 'seaborn-darkgrid', 
'seaborn-dark', 'seaborn-notebook', 
'seaborn-pastel', 'seaborn-white', 
'classic', 'ggplot', 'grayscale', 
'dark_background', 'seaborn-poster', 
'seaborn-muted', 'seaborn', 'bmh', 
'seaborn-paper', 'seaborn-whitegrid', 
'seaborn-bright', 'seaborn-talk', 
'fivethirtyeight', 'seaborn-colorblind', 
'seaborn-deep', 'seaborn-ticks']

Describing your graphs with labels

ax = df.plot(color='blue')

ax.set_xlabel('Date')
ax.set_ylabel('The values of my Y axis')
ax.set_title('The title of my plot')
plt.show()

Labelling your plots

Figure size, linewidth, linestyle and fontsize

ax = df.plot(figsize=(12, 5), fontsize=12,
             linewidth=3, linestyle='--')
ax.set_xlabel('Date', fontsize=16)
ax.set_ylabel('The values of my Y axis', fontsize=16)
ax.set_title('The title of my plot', fontsize=16)
plt.show()

Let's practice!

Visualizing Time Series Data in Python