Plotting time in Python with Matplotlib

Question

I have an array of timestamps in the format (HH:MM:SS.mmmmmm) and another array of floating point numbers, each corresponding to a value in the timestamp array.

Can

Answer 1

I had trouble with this using matplotlib version: 2.0.2. Running the example from above I got a centered stacked set of bubbles.

I "fixed" the problem by adding another line:

plt.plot([],[])

The entire code snippet becomes:

import datetime
import random
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib.dates as mdates


# make up some data
x = [datetime.datetime.now() + datetime.timedelta(minutes=i) for i in range(12)]
y = [i+random.gauss(0,1) for i,_ in enumerate(x)]

# plot
plt.plot([],[])
plt.scatter(x,y)

# beautify the x-labels
plt.gcf().autofmt_xdate()
myFmt = mdates.DateFormatter('%H:%M')
plt.gca().xaxis.set_major_formatter(myFmt)

plt.show()
plt.close()

This produces an image with the bubbles distributed as desired.