Histogram for discrete values with matplotlib

Question

I sometimes have to histogram discrete values with matplotlib. In that case, the choice of the binning can be crucial: if you histogram [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10] u

Answer 1

Perhaps a less-complete answer than J Richard Snape's, but one that I recently learned and that I found intuitive and easy.

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

# great seed
np.random.seed(1337)

# how many times will a fair die land on the same number out of 100 trials.
data = np.random.binomial(n=100, p=1/6, size=1000)

# the trick is to set up the bins centered on the integers, i.e.
# -0.5, 0.5, 1,5, 2.5, ... up to max(data) + 1.5. Then you substract -0.5 to
# eliminate the extra bin at the end.
bins = np.arange(0, data.max() + 1.5) - 0.5

# then you plot away
fig, ax = plt.subplots()
_ = ax.hist(data, bins)
ax.set_xticks(bins + 0.5)

Turns out that around 16/100 throws will be the same number!