Reduce y ticks spacing for histograms in matplotlib

Question

I am using matplotlib to plot a histogram where each bin contains 1 value. Here's a sample:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from matplotlib.ticker import MaxNLocator


def image():
    # Generate a bunch of random data, here's an example
    TYPE1 = [128, 129, 132, 6, 136, 139, 12, 13, 142, 140]
    TYPE2 = [18, 147, 148, 23, 152, 26, 154, 156, 157, 158]
    TYPE3 = [159, 161, 165, 42, 44, 172, 176, 182, 188, 62]
    TYPE4 = [190, 193, 198, 199, 72, 77, 80, 82, 215, 216]
    TYPE5 = [218, 223, 95, 226, 101, 106, 108, 109, 113, 127]

    fig, ax = plt.subplots(1, 1)
    ax = plt.figure().gca()
    ax.yaxis.set_major_locator(MaxNLocator(integer=True))
    ax.hist([TYPE1, TYPE2, TYPE3, TYPE4, TYPE5],
            color=['white', 'white', '0.8', 'green', 'black'],
            label=['TYPE1', 'TYPE2', 'TYPE3', 'TYPE4', 'TYPE5'],
            stacked=True,
            bins=250)

    ax.legend(loc='upper right', bbox_to_anchor=(1, -0.15), fancybox=True)
    plt.tight_layout()
    plt.show()

How do I reduce the spacing on the y axis between 0 and 1 to be say a quarter of the actual height to make it look like something as follows with a reduced height of the axis?

Answer 1

You can define the figure size where you can use a smaller height. Moreover, you do not need to define the ax again. I have commented out the redundant line. I would also use a 2 column format for the legends using the keyword ncol=2. It looks better.

fig, ax = plt.subplots(1, 1, figsize=(6, 2.5))
#     ax = plt.figure().gca()
ax.yaxis.set_major_locator(MaxNLocator(integer=True))

ax.legend(loc='upper right', bbox_to_anchor=(1, -0.15), fancybox=True, ncol=2)