Matplotlib: how to plot categorical data on the y-axis?

Question

Let's say that I have the following code, which comes from here:

gender = ['male','male','female','male','female']

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from collections import Counter

c = Counter(gender)

men = c['male']
women = c['female']

bar_heights = (men, women)
x = (1, 2)

fig, ax = plt.subplots()
width = 0.4

ax.bar(x, bar_heights, width)

ax.set_xlim((0, 3))
ax.set_ylim((0, max(men, women)*1.1))

ax.set_xticks([i+width/2 for i in x])
ax.set_xticklabels(['male', 'female'])

plt.show()

How could the categories male and female be plotted on the y-axis, as opposed to the x-axis?

Answer 1

Perhaps you're looking for barh:

gender = ['male','male','female','male','female']

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from collections import Counter

c = Counter(gender)

men = c['male']
women = c['female']

bar_heights = (men, women)
y = (1, 2)

fig, ax = plt.subplots()
width = 0.4

ax.barh(y, bar_heights, width)

ax.set_ylim((0, 3))
ax.set_xlim((0, max(men, women)*1.1))

ax.set_yticks([i+width/2 for i in y])
ax.set_yticklabels(['male', 'female'])

plt.show()