Adjust exponent text after setting scientific limits on matplotlib axis

Question

At the moment if I set matplotlib y axis ticklabels to scientific mode it gives me an exponent at the top of the y axis of the form 1e-5

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Answer 1

You get offset and set the text value but there doesn't seem to be a way to actually apply this to the axis... Even calling ax.yaxis.offsetText.set_text(offset) doesn't update the offset displayed. A work around it to remove the offset text and replace with brackets on the axis label,

ax.yaxis.offsetText.set_visible(False)
ax.set_ylabel("datalabel " +  r'$\left(\mathregular{10^{-5}}\right)$')

Or replace it with a manual text box, as a minimal example,

import matplotlib as mpl
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np

# Create a figure and axis
fig, ax = plt.subplots()
mpl.rc('text', usetex = True)

# Plot 100 random points 
# the y values of which are very small
large = 100000.0
x = np.random.rand(100)
y = np.random.rand(100)/large

ax.scatter(x,y)

# Set the y limits appropriately
ax.set_ylim(0, 1/large)

# Change the y ticklabel format to scientific format
ax.ticklabel_format(axis='y', style='sci', scilimits=(-2, 2))

#print(ax.yaxis.offsetText.get_position())
ax.yaxis.offsetText.set_visible(False)
ax.text(-0.21, 1.01/large, r'$\mathregular{10^{-2}}$')

# And show the figure
plt.show()

I know this isn't ideal but it may be that offset text cannot be changed manually or can only be the consistent with the numerical values...