CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonpandasmatplotlibaxis-labelsgraphing
Ahmed Fasih
Ahmed Fasih

Reputation: 6927

Unable to set xlabel when when Pandas creates scatter plot in multiple subplots with color label

I'm unable to set the xlabel of plots when

For example, this works fine: I can see the xlabel:

import numpy as np
import pandas as pd
import pylab as plt
plt.ion()

foo = pd.DataFrame(np.random.randn(5, 5), columns='a b c d e'.split())

fig, (ax1, ax2) = plt.subplots(nrows=2, sharex=True)
foo.plot.scatter(x='a', y='b', ax=ax1)
foo.plot.scatter(x='a', y='c', ax=ax2)
ax2.set_xlabel('xxx')  # works

However, the following slight twist, where I set the color c field, does not set the xlabel:

fig, (ax1, ax2) = plt.subplots(nrows=2, sharex=True)
foo.plot.scatter(x='a', y='b', ax=ax1, c='c')
foo.plot.scatter(x='a', y='c', ax=ax2, c='c')
ax2.set_xlabel('xx')  # NO x label

plt.xlabel doesn't work either. ax2.get_xlabel() returns the "xx" that I expect, but it's not visible:

no x label

How can I get an xlabel in this case? Pandas Github repo has 3000+ open issues, rather than filing this as a bug, I'd rather find a Matplotlib-oriented workaround to render an xlabel. (Python 3.8.1, Pandas 1.0.3, Matplotlib 3.2.0.)

Edit: moved from numeric column names to textual column names since it was causing confusion.

Upvotes: 3

Views: 1386

Answers (1)

William Miller
William Miller

Reputation: 10320

The visibility of the xlabel is being set to False for some reason, to get around it you simply need to do 

fig, (ax1, ax2) = plt.subplots(nrows=2, sharex=True)
foo.plot.scatter(x='a', y='b', ax=ax1, c='c')
foo.plot.scatter(x='a', y='c', ax=ax2, c='c')
ax2.set_xlabel('xxx')
ax2.xaxis.get_label().set_visible(True)

This will give you

enter image description here

Upvotes: 4

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