cannot plot with matplotlib and pandas

Question

I am using OSX (Mojave 10.14.3) and am having a strange issue plotting a pandas (0.24.2) dataframe using matplotlib (3.0.3). I am using python 3.7.3.

So, the code is as:

import pandas as pd
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

df = pd.DataFrame({
                  'name':['john','mary','peter','jeff','bill','lisa','jose'],
                  'age':[23,78,22,19,45,33,20],
                  'gender':['M','F','M','M','M','F','M'],
                  'state':['california','dc','california','dc','california','texas','texas'],
                  'num_children':[2,0,0,3,2,1,4],
                  'num_pets':[5,1,0,5,2,2,3]
                  })

df.plot(kind='scatter',x='num_children',y='num_pets',color='red')
plt.show()

All this does is show an empty window with nothing in it. I was expecting a scatterplot with 7 points. The example is taken from the web tutorial as is.

EDIT

plt.savefig('myfilename.png')

Savefig works.

Your code works on my computer, with pandas version '0.21.1' and matplotlib version 2.2.0. What versions do you have? — Itamar Mushkin
– Itamar Mushkin, Commented May 7, 2019 at 13:43
I updated the question with the versions. Are you using a mac as well? — Luca
– Luca, Commented May 7, 2019 at 13:45
Do other plots work (plt.plot(range(10)); plt.show()`?) If not, they you likely have a backend problem; do you get any errors? My guess would be your install is crossed somehow. — Jody Klymak
– Jody Klymak, Commented May 7, 2019 at 14:02
Someone reported a similar problem yesterday: stackoverflow.com/questions/56013105/… — ImportanceOfBeingErnest
– ImportanceOfBeingErnest, Commented May 7, 2019 at 15:09

Luca · Accepted Answer · 2019-05-07 15:19:06Z

1

I am not sure if this will help anyone but I basically had to install python as a framework to make it work. I was using Anaconda, so something like:

conda install python.app
pythonw script.py  # note using pythonw

I, then, was able to get the plot to render correctly by using the macosx backend:

import matplotlib as mpl
mpl.use('MacOSX')

answered May 7, 2019 at 15:19

Luca

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3 Comments

Jody Klymak Over a year ago

Right you can’t run macosx backend w/o using pythonw for now. As of 3.1 you should be able to. However it’s strange that you got a blank figure. Were there any warnings?

Luca Over a year ago

@JodyKlymak No warnings. My default backend was TkAgg and I still get a blank figure with that for some reason...

Jody Klymak Over a year ago

Ok I don’t think anaconda installs tk by default so it was probably trying to use the system to libraries? If you specifically install tk in conda does it work?

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