How do I plot points in [x,y] format using Python?

Question

Sorry, I'm a beginner and have no clue about plotting. I have four points: a, b, c and d. How do I plot them using matplotlib?

a = [1, 2]
b = [2, 4]
c = [2.5, 4]
d = [4.5, 5]

Thanks for your help!

Steve · Accepted Answer · 2020-06-19 05:50:48Z

2

The accepted answer is perfectly correct. Another possible way that I personally find a little cleaner would be to use Numpy to transpose the datapoints.

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

a = [1, 2]
b = [2, 4]
c = [2.5, 4]
d = [4.5, 5]

l = np.array([a,b,c,d]) #[[1,2], [2,4], [2.5,4], [4.5,5]]
datapoints = l.T        #[[1, 2, 2.5, 4.5], [2, 4, 4, 5]]

plt.scatter(datapoints[0], datapoints[1])

plt.show()

Even cleaner than this would be to do

x,y = l.T
plt.scatter(x, y)

answered Jun 19, 2020 at 5:50

Steve

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Comments

Community · Accepted Answer · 2020-06-20 09:12:55Z

1

Easy, use `plt.scatter()`:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

a = [1, 2]
b = [2, 4]
c = [2.5, 4]
d = [4.5, 5]

l = [a,b,c,d]

plt.scatter([i[0] for i in l], [i[1] for i in l])

plt.show()

Output:

edited Jun 20, 2020 at 9:12

CommunityBot

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answered Jun 19, 2020 at 4:39

Red

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2 Comments

codenewbie Over a year ago

Thanks for your help. How do I label the points a, b, c, d?

Tom Over a year ago

You can use plt.text to label points, e.g. to label a you can do plt.text(a[0], a[1], 'a'). You can also wrap this in a loop if you create a list of names

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How do I plot points in [x,y] format using Python?

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Easy, use `plt.scatter()`:

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Easy, use plt.scatter():

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Easy, use `plt.scatter()`: