CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonmatplotlibchartsbar-chart
Lone Learner
Lone Learner

Reputation: 20688

Set bar chart labels as well as values using a single plt.bar() function

Inspired by this answer ( https://stackoverflow.com/a/43826400/1175080 ) I wrote a Matplotlib code that can plot bar chart with labels like this:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

counts = [10, 20, 30, 40, 50]
labels = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e']

plt.bar(range(0, len(counts)), counts)
plt.xticks(range(0, len(counts)), labels)
plt.show()

Output:

enter image description here

I want to know why we have to go through the multiple steps of first defining the x axis as integers and then place tick labels at tick positions?

Why can't we simply do this?

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

counts = [10, 20, 30, 40, 50]
labels = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e']

plt.bar(labels, counts)
plt.show()

This code also produces the same output as above.

Does the second method has any disadvantage or problem due to which the second method is not the right way to set bar chart labels in general?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 70

Answers (1)

ImportanceOfBeingErnest
ImportanceOfBeingErnest

Reputation: 339430

The answer you link to has been written in May 2017.
Matplotlib 2.1, which is the first version to support categoricals (strings as input to bar), was released 8 Oct 2017.

The only reason for the use of the range in that linked answer is hence that at the time it was written, there was no alternative available.

Upvotes: 1

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