Re: [Matplotlib-users] A request for a Matplotlib extension to hist

Hi,

I think there is a good reason to add the functionality to plot
pre-computed histograms to hist() or to a new function with similar API.

Sometimes histograms are heavy or we don't want to recompute them to
perform a series of plots.

In this case, I miss the ability to easily set the plot style. hist()
allows to chose between bar, step and stepfilled. To change the style with
pre-computed histograms, I need to write 3 different "plots" using bar(),
plot() and fill_between() respectively. This is quite inconvenient and
error prone, considering that these function have different API for the
input data.

Maybe the plotting part of hist() should be splitted in a standalone
function (plotbins() ?)
In this way, hist() can call this function to generate the plot, but also
the user can call it when the histogram is pre-computed. The bonus is that
we retain the same API for plot style.

My 2cents,
Antonio


On Fri, Apr 24, 2015 at 4:31 AM, Jerzy Karczmarczuk <
jer...@un...> wrote:

>
> Le 24/04/2015 12:58, Christian Alis responds to the problem posed by
> Virgil Stokes
> > I had the same problem some time ago and what I did is to use bar() to
> > plot the histogram, which can be done in one line:
> >
> > hst, bin_edges = np.histogram(data)
> > plt.bar(bin_edges[:-1], hst)
> >
> > Perhaps this trick can be added in the documentation?
> >
> > I am willing to code Virgil's request if many will find this useful.
> Separating the computation of the histogram, and plotting it is
> obviously useful.
> (I needed this in a linguistical simulation context, where plotting had
> no sense).
>
> Actually hist is more or less this,
> see _axes.py, line 5678, the Axes method hist just calls
> numpy.histogram. And then plots bars (or uses some other style).
>
> So, although completing the documentation might be of general interest,
> I would NOT recommend adding some new version of hist.
> This would be misleading. Hist is hist is hist(ogram). It computes the
> histogram (and eventually plots it). If it is already computed elsewhere,
> naming  the procedure which JUST plots some bars a "histogram" is
> methodologically very dubious.
>
> Jerzy Karczmarczuk
>
>
>
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