Pandas Series: plot.line() function

Last update on September 15 2022 12:57:06 (UTC/GMT +8 hours)

Series-plot.line() function

The plot.line() function is used to plot Series or DataFrame as lines.
This function is useful to plot lines using DataFrame’s values as coordinates.

Syntax:

Series.plot.line(self, x=None, y=None, **kwargs)

Parameters:

Name	Description	Type/Default Value	Required / Optional
x	Columns to use for the horizontal axis. Either the location or the label of the columns to be used. By default, it will use the DataFrame indices.	int or str	Optional
y	The values to be plotted. Either the location or the label of the columns to be used. By default, it will use the remaining DataFrame numeric columns.	int, str, or list of them	Optional
**kwds	Keyword arguments to pass on to DataFrame.plot().

Returns: matplotlib.axes.Axes or numpy.ndarray
Return an ndarray when subplots=True.

Example:

Python-Pandas Code:

import numpy as np
import pandas as pd
s = pd.Series([2, 4, 3])
s.plot.line()

Output:

<matplotlib.axes._subplots.AxesSubplot at 0x9660710>

Example - The following example shows the populations for some animals over the years:

Python-Pandas Code:

import numpy as np
import pandas as pd
df = pd.DataFrame({
    'goat': [20, 18, 489, 564, 1665],
    'deer': [6, 25, 288, 600, 1800]
}, index=[2001, 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016])
lines = df.plot.line()

Output:

Example - An example with subplots, so an array of axes is returned:

Python-Pandas Code:

import numpy as np
import pandas as pd
df = pd.DataFrame({
    'goat': [20, 18, 489, 564, 1665],
    'deer': [6, 25, 288, 600, 1800]
}, index=[2001, 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016])
axes = df.plot.line(subplots=True)
type(axes)

Output:

numpy.ndarray

Example - The following example shows the relationship between both populations:

Python-Pandas Code:

import numpy as np
import pandas as pd
df = pd.DataFrame({
    'goat': [20, 18, 489, 564, 1665],
    'deer': [6, 25, 288, 600, 1800]
}, index=[2001, 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016])
axes = df.plot.line(subplots=True)
lines = df.plot.line(x='goat', y='deer')

Output:

numpy.ndarray

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