Axis problem demo program

Greetings,

I’ve been having difficulties with axis limit control. From a bigger application I’ve reduced an example down to the following short code segment. Note, the commented-out line, #x = numpy.linspace(98.42, 99.21, 100), line in which the example works OKAY.

What is annoying is that the following example will produce a graph in which the x-axis is labeled at ticks starting at 0.1 going to 0.35 (times 1.474e2 !) Instead, I am expecting an axis from 147.63 to 148.31. Note that if you swap out the x with the commented-out line the example works like I would expect.

By the way, this example is with pylab. However, I’ve got the same problem using plt from matplotlib or anything matplotlib related.

···

===

import random
import numpy
import pylab

#x = numpy.linspace(98.42, 99.21, 100)
x = numpy.linspace(147.63, 148.31, 100)
y = numpy.random.random((len(x)))
pylab.plot(x, y)
pylab.xlim(numpy.min(x), numpy.min(x))
pylab.show()

Jim A. Horning
jim@…2846…

Jim Horning wrote:

Greetings,

I've been having difficulties with axis limit control. From a bigger application I've reduced an example down to the following short code segment. Note, the commented-out line, #x = numpy.linspace(98.42, 99.21, 100), line in which the example works OKAY.

What is annoying is that the following example will produce a graph in which the x-axis is labeled at ticks starting at 0.1 going to 0.35 (times 1.474e2 !) Instead, I am expecting an axis from 147.63 to 148.31. Note that if you swap out the x with the commented-out line the example works like I would expect.

First, a small bug in your example. I think you meant:

pylab.xlim(numpy.min(x), numpy.min(x))

to be:

pylab.xlim(numpy.min(x), numpy.max(x))

In the former case, when you have "unity" limits, matplotlib adds a small delta to the min and max so the range is not empty.

Once this is fixed, the notation is actually ~0.1 to ~0.8 *plus* (not *times*) 1.474e2, which is at least correct, if not desired. The reason matplotlib does this is that, for space considerations, it avoids displaying ticks with more than 4 significant digits. Since the range here is so small, it prints the "offset" in the lower right and adjusts the ticks accordingly. Unfortunately, this number of significant digits isn't user customizable, though perhaps it should be (just as the range for scientific notation is). Can you file an enhancement request in the tracker so this doesn't get lost?

Does anyone with more experience with the scientific notation/offset code have any further comments?

Mike

···

By the way, this example is with pylab. However, I've got the same problem using plt from matplotlib or anything matplotlib related.

import random
import numpy
import pylab

#x = numpy.linspace(98.42, 99.21, 100)
x = numpy.linspace(147.63, 148.31, 100)
y = numpy.random.random((len(x)))
pylab.plot(x, y)
pylab.xlim(numpy.min(x), numpy.min(x))
pylab.show()

--
--------------------
Jim A. Horning
jim@...2846... <mailto:jim@…2846…>
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Michael Droettboom
Science Software Branch
Operations and Engineering Division
Space Telescope Science Institute
Operated by AURA for NASA

Hi Jim,

I attached an example that does the job circumventing Matplotlibs scientific
formatting instead of solving the problem with number of digits in scientific
formatting. It uses a FuncFormatter from matplotlib.ticker, which allows you
to define your own tick-formatting.

Kind regards
Matthias

axis_problem_demo_program.py (470 Bytes)

···

On Wednesday 28 October 2009 11:16:54 Jim Horning wrote:

Greetings,

I've been having difficulties with axis limit control. From a bigger
application I've reduced an example down to the following short code
segment. Note, the commented-out line, #x = numpy.linspace(98.42, 99.21,
100), line in which the example works OKAY.

What is annoying is that the following example will produce a graph in
which the x-axis is labeled at ticks starting at 0.1 going to 0.35 (times
1.474e2 !) Instead, I am expecting an axis from 147.63 to 148.31. Note
that if you swap out the x with the commented-out line the example works
like I would expect.

By the way, this example is with pylab. However, I've got the same problem
using plt from matplotlib or anything matplotlib related.

import random
import numpy
import pylab

#x = numpy.linspace(98.42, 99.21, 100)
x = numpy.linspace(147.63, 148.31, 100)
y = numpy.random.random((len(x)))
pylab.plot(x, y)
pylab.xlim(numpy.min(x), numpy.min(x))
pylab.show()

--
--------------------
Jim A. Horning
jim@...2846...

While it is possible to turn off using the offset (or setting it
manually), the api is not very friendly.

fmt = gca().xaxis.get_major_formatter()
fmt._useOffset = False
fmt.offset = 0

Regards,

-JJ

···

On Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 9:55 AM, Michael Droettboom <mdroe@...86...> wrote:

Does anyone with more experience with the scientific notation/offset
code have any further comments?