Customize your time series plot

Visualizing Time Series Data in Python

Thomas Vincent

Head of Data Science, Getty Images

Slicing time series data

discoveries['1960':'1970']

discoveries['1950-01':'1950-12']

discoveries['1960-01-01':'1960-01-15']

Plotting subset of your time series data

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
plt.style.use('fivethirtyeight')
df_subset = discoveries['1960':'1970']

ax = df_subset.plot(color='blue', fontsize=14)
plt.show()

Time series subset example

Adding markers

ax.axvline(x='1969-01-01', 
           color='red', 
           linestyle='--')

ax.axhline(y=100, 
           color='green', 
           linestyle='--')

Using markers: the full code

ax = discoveries.plot(color='blue')
ax.set_xlabel('Date')
ax.set_ylabel('Number of great discoveries')

ax.axvline('1969-01-01', color='red', linestyle='--')
ax.axhline(4, color='green', linestyle='--')

Adding markers to your plot

Highlighting regions of interest

ax.axvspan('1964-01-01', '1968-01-01', 
           color='red', alpha=0.5)

ax.axhspan(8, 6, color='green',
           alpha=0.2)

Highlighting regions of interest: the full code

ax = discoveries.plot(color='blue')
ax.set_xlabel('Date')
ax.set_ylabel('Number of great discoveries')

ax.axvspan('1964-01-01', '1968-01-01', color='red',
alpha=0.3)
ax.axhspan(8, 6, color='green', alpha=0.3)

Adding regions of interest to your plot

Let's practice!

Visualizing Time Series Data in Python