Plotting package?

[Andrew Koenig]

This may be a foolish question, but what's the most straightforward way to
plot a bunch of data in Python?

That is, I want to write a program that does some number crunching, and then
I want to change some parameters and watch how the changes affect the
results. I could produce a file to hand to gnuplot, but that's a bit of a
pain; so I'm wondering if there is a widely used package to which I can give
my x-y pairs and have it produce a graph for me with axes, scaling, etc.

[danmcleran]

Try matplotlib, it's pretty nice and easy to use.

[Jorge Godoy]

Andrew Koenig wrote:

This may be a foolish question, but what's the most straightforward way to
plot a bunch of data in Python?

That is, I want to write a program that does some number crunching, and
then I want to change some parameters and watch how the changes affect the
results. I could produce a file to hand to gnuplot, but that's a bit of a
pain; so I'm wondering if there is a widely used package to which I can
give my x-y pairs and have it produce a graph for me with axes, scaling,
etc.

I liked the output of PyChart. It is pretty easy to use. Also, I don't
know what you're doing with numbers, but there's rpy to use with R.

--
Jorge Godoy <go***@ieee.org>

"Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur."
- Qualquer coisa dita em latim soa profundo.
- Anything said in Latin sounds smart.

[John Hunter]

>>>>> "Andrew" == Andrew Koenig <ar*@acm.org> writes:

Andrew> This may be a foolish question, but what's the most
Andrew> straightforward way to plot a bunch of data in Python?
in matplotlib/pylab

from pylab import figure, show
x = range(10)
y = [val**2 for val in x]
fig = figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(111)
ax.plot(x,y)
ax.set_title('My first plot')
ax.set_xlabel('x')
ax.set_ylabel('y')
show()

Tutorial: http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/tutorial.html
Screenshots: http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html

JDH

[Lou Pecora]

In article <lg*****************@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>,
"Andrew Koenig" <ar*@acm.org> wrote:

This may be a foolish question, but what's the most straightforward way to
plot a bunch of data in Python?

That is, I want to write a program that does some number crunching, and then
I want to change some parameters and watch how the changes affect the
results. I could produce a file to hand to gnuplot, but that's a bit of a
pain; so I'm wondering if there is a widely used package to which I can give
my x-y pairs and have it produce a graph for me with axes, scaling, etc.

I second all other recommendations on matplotlib.

-- Lou Pecora (my views are my own) REMOVE THIS to email me.

[James Graham]

Andrew Koenig wrote:

This may be a foolish question, but what's the most straightforward way to
plot a bunch of data in Python?

That is, I want to write a program that does some number crunching, and then
I want to change some parameters and watch how the changes affect the
results. I could produce a file to hand to gnuplot, but that's a bit of a
pain; so I'm wondering if there is a widely used package to which I can give
my x-y pairs and have it produce a graph for me with axes, scaling, etc.

In addition to the other (excellent) suggestions, you could have a look
at Veusz [1]. It has a GUI which, in your case, you could use to create
all the boilerplate code (axes, labels, etc.) interactively and then use
the scripting interface to feed in different datasets as required. The
major limitation is that it requires Qt/PyQt 3 so I don't know how easy
it is to get working under Windows.

[1] http://home.gna.org/veusz/