Lesson overview

During this week, we will introduce you to data visualization and some different modules that can be used to make data plots in Python. You can create simple plots directly from Pandas, for example, but in order to control many aspects of those plots we need to also know how to use the plotting module called matplotlib. Matplotlib is an extremely powerful and flexible plotting module, and as you will see, there are many excellent example plots available online to help you get started.

  1. Useful modules for plotting in Python
  2. Anatomy of a plot
  3. Basics of plotting with Matplotlib
  4. More advanced plotting with Matplotlib
  5. Exercise 7

Learning goals

After this weeks lesson your should be able to:

  • Make basic x-y plots of data using Matplotlib
  • Manipulate plot formats
  • Create plots in Jupyter notebooks or save them as separate image files

Lesson videos

Lesson 7.1 - Plotting in Python, Introduction to Matplotlib

Dave Whipp & Henrikki Tenkanen, University of Helsinki @ Geo-Python channel on Youtube.

Lesson 7.2 - Advanced plotting with Matplotlib

Dave Whipp & Henrikki Tenkanen, University of Helsinki @ Geo-Python channel on Youtube.

Lesson 7 - Review of Exercise 6

Dave Whipp & Henrikki Tenkanen, University of Helsinki @ Geo-Python channel on Youtube.