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Matplotlib + pandas change xtick label frequency when using period[Q-DEC] [duplicate]

I am trying to fix how python plots my data.
Say:
x = [0,5,9,10,15]
y = [0,1,2,3,4]
matplotlib.pyplot.plot(x,y)
matplotlib.pyplot.show()
The x axis' ticks are plotted in intervals of 5. Is there a way to make it show intervals of 1?

You could explicitly set where you want to tick marks with plt.xticks:
plt.xticks(np.arange(min(x), max(x)+1, 1.0))
For example,
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
x = [0,5,9,10,15]
y = [0,1,2,3,4]
plt.plot(x,y)
plt.xticks(np.arange(min(x), max(x)+1, 1.0))
plt.show()
(np.arange was used rather than Python's range function just in case min(x) and max(x) are floats instead of ints.)
The plt.plot (or ax.plot) function will automatically set default x and y limits. If you wish to keep those limits, and just change the stepsize of the tick marks, then you could use ax.get_xlim() to discover what limits Matplotlib has already set.
start, end = ax.get_xlim()
ax.xaxis.set_ticks(np.arange(start, end, stepsize))
The default tick formatter should do a decent job rounding the tick values to a sensible number of significant digits. However, if you wish to have more control over the format, you can define your own formatter. For example,
ax.xaxis.set_major_formatter(ticker.FormatStrFormatter('%0.1f'))
Here's a runnable example:
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib.ticker as ticker
x = [0,5,9,10,15]
y = [0,1,2,3,4]
fig, ax = plt.subplots()
ax.plot(x,y)
start, end = ax.get_xlim()
ax.xaxis.set_ticks(np.arange(start, end, 0.712123))
ax.xaxis.set_major_formatter(ticker.FormatStrFormatter('%0.1f'))
plt.show()

Another approach is to set the axis locator:
import matplotlib.ticker as plticker
loc = plticker.MultipleLocator(base=1.0) # this locator puts ticks at regular intervals
ax.xaxis.set_major_locator(loc)
There are several different types of locator depending upon your needs.
Here is a full example:
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib.ticker as plticker
x = [0,5,9,10,15]
y = [0,1,2,3,4]
fig, ax = plt.subplots()
ax.plot(x,y)
loc = plticker.MultipleLocator(base=1.0) # this locator puts ticks at regular intervals
ax.xaxis.set_major_locator(loc)
plt.show()

I like this solution (from the Matplotlib Plotting Cookbook):
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib.ticker as ticker
x = [0,5,9,10,15]
y = [0,1,2,3,4]
tick_spacing = 1
fig, ax = plt.subplots(1,1)
ax.plot(x,y)
ax.xaxis.set_major_locator(ticker.MultipleLocator(tick_spacing))
plt.show()
This solution give you explicit control of the tick spacing via the number given to ticker.MultipleLocater(), allows automatic limit determination, and is easy to read later.

In case anyone is interested in a general one-liner, simply get the current ticks and use it to set the new ticks by sampling every other tick.
ax.set_xticks(ax.get_xticks()[::2])

if you just want to set the spacing a simple one liner with minimal boilerplate:
plt.gca().xaxis.set_major_locator(plt.MultipleLocator(1))
also works easily for minor ticks:
plt.gca().xaxis.set_minor_locator(plt.MultipleLocator(1))
a bit of a mouthfull, but pretty compact

This is a bit hacky, but by far the cleanest/easiest to understand example that I've found to do this. It's from an answer on SO here:
Cleanest way to hide every nth tick label in matplotlib colorbar?
for label in ax.get_xticklabels()[::2]:
label.set_visible(False)
Then you can loop over the labels setting them to visible or not depending on the density you want.
edit: note that sometimes matplotlib sets labels == '', so it might look like a label is not present, when in fact it is and just isn't displaying anything. To make sure you're looping through actual visible labels, you could try:
visible_labels = [lab for lab in ax.get_xticklabels() if lab.get_visible() is True and lab.get_text() != '']
plt.setp(visible_labels[::2], visible=False)

This is an old topic, but I stumble over this every now and then and made this function. It's very convenient:
import matplotlib.pyplot as pp
import numpy as np
def resadjust(ax, xres=None, yres=None):
"""
Send in an axis and I fix the resolution as desired.
"""
if xres:
start, stop = ax.get_xlim()
ticks = np.arange(start, stop + xres, xres)
ax.set_xticks(ticks)
if yres:
start, stop = ax.get_ylim()
ticks = np.arange(start, stop + yres, yres)
ax.set_yticks(ticks)
One caveat of controlling the ticks like this is that one does no longer enjoy the interactive automagic updating of max scale after an added line. Then do
gca().set_ylim(top=new_top) # for example
and run the resadjust function again.

I developed an inelegant solution. Consider that we have the X axis and also a list of labels for each point in X.
Example:
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
x = [0,1,2,3,4,5]
y = [10,20,15,18,7,19]
xlabels = ['jan','feb','mar','apr','may','jun']
Let's say that I want to show ticks labels only for 'feb' and 'jun'
xlabelsnew = []
for i in xlabels:
if i not in ['feb','jun']:
i = ' '
xlabelsnew.append(i)
else:
xlabelsnew.append(i)
Good, now we have a fake list of labels. First, we plotted the original version.
plt.plot(x,y)
plt.xticks(range(0,len(x)),xlabels,rotation=45)
plt.show()
Now, the modified version.
plt.plot(x,y)
plt.xticks(range(0,len(x)),xlabelsnew,rotation=45)
plt.show()

Pure Python Implementation
Below's a pure python implementation of the desired functionality that handles any numeric series (int or float) with positive, negative, or mixed values and allows for the user to specify the desired step size:
import math
def computeTicks (x, step = 5):
"""
Computes domain with given step encompassing series x
# params
x - Required - A list-like object of integers or floats
step - Optional - Tick frequency
"""
xMax, xMin = math.ceil(max(x)), math.floor(min(x))
dMax, dMin = xMax + abs((xMax % step) - step) + (step if (xMax % step != 0) else 0), xMin - abs((xMin % step))
return range(dMin, dMax, step)
Sample Output
# Negative to Positive
series = [-2, 18, 24, 29, 43]
print(list(computeTicks(series)))
[-5, 0, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45]
# Negative to 0
series = [-30, -14, -10, -9, -3, 0]
print(list(computeTicks(series)))
[-30, -25, -20, -15, -10, -5, 0]
# 0 to Positive
series = [19, 23, 24, 27]
print(list(computeTicks(series)))
[15, 20, 25, 30]
# Floats
series = [1.8, 12.0, 21.2]
print(list(computeTicks(series)))
[0, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25]
# Step – 100
series = [118.3, 293.2, 768.1]
print(list(computeTicks(series, step = 100)))
[100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700, 800]
Sample Usage
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
x = [0,5,9,10,15]
y = [0,1,2,3,4]
plt.plot(x,y)
plt.xticks(computeTicks(x))
plt.show()
Notice the x-axis has integer values all evenly spaced by 5, whereas the y-axis has a different interval (the matplotlib default behavior, because the ticks weren't specified).

Generalisable one liner, with only Numpy imported:
ax.set_xticks(np.arange(min(x),max(x),1))
Set in the context of the question:
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
fig, ax = plt.subplots()
x = [0,5,9,10,15]
y = [0,1,2,3,4]
ax.plot(x,y)
ax.set_xticks(np.arange(min(x),max(x),1))
plt.show()
How it works:
fig, ax = plt.subplots() gives the ax object which contains the axes.
np.arange(min(x),max(x),1) gives an array of interval 1 from the min of x to the max of x. This is the new x ticks that we want.
ax.set_xticks() changes the ticks on the ax object.

xmarks=[i for i in range(1,length+1,1)]
plt.xticks(xmarks)
This worked for me
if you want ticks between [1,5] (1 and 5 inclusive) then replace
length = 5

Since None of the above solutions worked for my usecase, here I provide a solution using None (pun!) which can be adapted to a wide variety of scenarios.
Here is a sample piece of code that produces cluttered ticks on both X and Y axes.
# Note the super cluttered ticks on both X and Y axis.
# inputs
x = np.arange(1, 101)
y = x * np.log(x)
fig = plt.figure() # create figure
ax = fig.add_subplot(111)
ax.plot(x, y)
ax.set_xticks(x) # set xtick values
ax.set_yticks(y) # set ytick values
plt.show()
Now, we clean up the clutter with a new plot that shows only a sparse set of values on both x and y axes as ticks.
# inputs
x = np.arange(1, 101)
y = x * np.log(x)
fig = plt.figure() # create figure
ax = fig.add_subplot(111)
ax.plot(x, y)
ax.set_xticks(x)
ax.set_yticks(y)
# which values need to be shown?
# here, we show every third value from `x` and `y`
show_every = 3
sparse_xticks = [None] * x.shape[0]
sparse_xticks[::show_every] = x[::show_every]
sparse_yticks = [None] * y.shape[0]
sparse_yticks[::show_every] = y[::show_every]
ax.set_xticklabels(sparse_xticks, fontsize=6) # set sparse xtick values
ax.set_yticklabels(sparse_yticks, fontsize=6) # set sparse ytick values
plt.show()
Depending on the usecase, one can adapt the above code simply by changing show_every and using that for sampling tick values for X or Y or both the axes.
If this stepsize based solution doesn't fit, then one can also populate the values of sparse_xticks or sparse_yticks at irregular intervals, if that is what is desired.

You can loop through labels and show or hide those you want:
for i, label in enumerate(ax.get_xticklabels()):
if i % interval != 0:
label.set_visible(False)

How to automatically set the y-axis limits after limiting the x-axis

Let's say that I have a certain number of data sets that I want to plot together.
And then I want to zoom on a certain part (for example, using ax.set_xlim, or plt.xlim or plt.axis). When I do that it still keeps the calculated range prior to the zoom. How can I make it rescale to what is currently being shown?
For example, using
import matplotlib
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib.gridspec as gridspec
data_x = [d for d in range(100)]
data_y = [2*d for d in range(100)]
data_y2 = [(d-50)*(d-50) for d in range(100)]
fig = plt.figure(constrained_layout=True)
gs = gridspec.GridSpec(2, 1, figure=fig)
ax1 = fig.add_subplot(gs[0, 0])
ax1.grid()
ax1.set_xlabel('x')
ax1.set_ylabel('y')
ax1.scatter(data_x, data_y, s=0.5)
ax1.scatter(data_x, data_y2, s=0.5)
ax2 = fig.add_subplot(gs[1, 0])
ax2.grid()
ax2.set_xlabel('x')
ax2.set_ylabel('y')
ax2.scatter(data_x, data_y, s=0.5)
ax2.scatter(data_x, data_y2, s=0.5)
ax2.set_xlim(35,45)
fig.savefig('scaling.png', dpi=300)
plt.close(fig)
Which generate
as you can see the plot below gets hard to see something since the y-axis kept using the same range as the non-limited version.
I have tried using relim, autoscale or autoscale_view but that did not work. For a single data set, I could use ylim with the minimum and maximum values for that dataset. But for different data set, I would have to look through all of them.
Is there a better way to force a recalculation of the y-axis range?

Convert the lists to numpy arrays
create a Boolean mask of data_x based on xlim_min and xlim_max
use the mask to select the relevant data points in the y data
combine the two selected y arrays
select the min and max values from the selected y values and set them as ylim
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
# use a variable for the xlim limits
xlim_min = 35
xlim_max = 45
# convert lists to arrays
data_x = np.array(data_x)
data_y = np.array(data_y)
data_y2 = np.array(data_y2)
# create a mask for the values to be plotted based on the xlims
x_mask = (data_x >= xlim_min) & (data_x <= xlim_max)
# use the mask on y arrays
y2_vals = data_y2[x_mask]
y_vals = data_y[x_mask]
# combine y arrays
y_all = np.concatenate((y2_vals, y_vals))
# get min and max y
ylim_min = y_all.min()
ylim_max = y_all.max()
# other code from op
...
# use the values to set xlim and ylim
ax2.set_xlim(xlim_min, xlim_max)
ax2.set_ylim(ylim_min, ylim_max)
Instead of using ylim and xlim, you can do x_vals = data_x[x_mask] and then plot x_vals with y_vals and y2_vals, which removes 5 lines of code.
This is similar to Matplotlib - fixing x axis scale and autoscale y axis
# use a variable for the xlim limits
xlim_min = 35
xlim_max = 45
# convert lists to arrays
data_x = np.array(data_x)
data_y = np.array(data_y)
data_y2 = np.array(data_y2)
# create a mask for the values to be plotted based on the xlims
x_mask = (data_x >= xlim_min) & (data_x <= xlim_max)
# use the mask on x
x_vals = data_x[x_mask]
# use the mask on y
y2_vals = data_y2[x_mask]
y_vals = data_y[x_mask]
# other code from op
...
# plot
ax2.scatter(x_vals, y_vals, s=0.5)
ax2.scatter(x_vals, y2_vals, s=0.5)

How to set fixed spaces between ticks in maptlotlib

I am preparing a graph of latency percentile results. This is my pd.DataFrame looks like:
import pandas as pd
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
%matplotlib inline
result = pd.DataFrame(np.random.randint(133000, size=(5,3)), columns=list('ABC'), index=[99.0, 99.9, 99.99, 99.999, 99.9999])
I am using this function (commented lines are different pyplot methods I have already tried to achieve my goal):
def plot_latency_time_bar(result):
ind = np.arange(4)
means = []
stds = []
for index, row in result.iterrows():
means.append(np.mean([row[0]//1000, row[1]//1000, row[2]//1000]))
stds.append(np .std([row[0]//1000, row[1]//1000, row[2]//1000]))
plt.bar(result.index.values, means, 0.2, yerr=stds, align='center')
plt.xlabel('Percentile')
plt.ylabel('Latency')
plt.xticks(result.index.values)
# plt.xticks(ind, ('99.0', '99.9', '99.99', '99.999', '99.99999'))
# plt.autoscale(enable=False, axis='x', tight=False)
# plt.axis('auto')
# plt.margins(0.8, 0)
# plt.semilogx(basex=5)
plt.legend(bbox_to_anchor=(1.05, 1), loc=2, borderaxespad=0.)
fig = plt.gcf()
fig.set_size_inches(15.5, 10.5)
And here is the figure:
As you can see bars for all percentiles above 99.0 overlaps and are completely unreadable. I would like to set some fixed space between ticks to have a same space between all of them.

Since you're using pandas, you can do all this from within that library:
means = df.mean(axis=1)/1000
stds = df.std(axis=1)/1000
means.plot.bar(yerr=stds, fc='b')
# Make some room for the x-axis tick labels
plt.subplots_adjust(bottom=0.2)
plt.show()

Not wishing to take anything away from xnx's answer (which is the most elegant way to do things given that you're working in pandas, and therefore likely the best answer for you) but the key insight you're missing is that, in matplotlib, the x positions of the data you're plotting and the x tick labels are independent things. If you say:
nominalX = np.arange( 1, 6 ) ** 2
y = np.arange( 1, 6 ) ** 4
positionalX = np.arange(len(y))
plt.bar( positionalX, y ) # graph y against the numbers 1..n
plt.gca().set(xticks=positionalX + 0.4, xticklabels=nominalX) # ...but superficially label the X values as something else
then that's different from tying positions to your nominal X values:
plt.bar( nominalX, y )
Note that I added 0.4 to the x position of the ticks, because that's half the default width of the bars bar( ..., width=0.8 )—so the ticks end up in the middle of the bar.

Plotting images side by side using matplotlib

I was wondering how I am able to plot images side by side using matplotlib for example something like this:
The closest I got is this:
This was produced by using this code:
f, axarr = plt.subplots(2,2)
axarr[0,0] = plt.imshow(image_datas[0])
axarr[0,1] = plt.imshow(image_datas[1])
axarr[1,0] = plt.imshow(image_datas[2])
axarr[1,1] = plt.imshow(image_datas[3])
But I can't seem to get the other images to show. I'm thinking that there must be a better way to do this as I would imagine trying to manage the indexes would be a pain. I have looked through the documentation although I have a feeling I may be look at the wrong one. Would anyone be able to provide me with an example or point me in the right direction?
EDIT:
See the answer from #duhaime if you want a function to automatically determine the grid size.

The problem you face is that you try to assign the return of imshow (which is an matplotlib.image.AxesImage to an existing axes object.
The correct way of plotting image data to the different axes in axarr would be
f, axarr = plt.subplots(2,2)
axarr[0,0].imshow(image_datas[0])
axarr[0,1].imshow(image_datas[1])
axarr[1,0].imshow(image_datas[2])
axarr[1,1].imshow(image_datas[3])
The concept is the same for all subplots, and in most cases the axes instance provide the same methods than the pyplot (plt) interface.
E.g. if ax is one of your subplot axes, for plotting a normal line plot you'd use ax.plot(..) instead of plt.plot(). This can actually be found exactly in the source from the page you link to.

One thing that I found quite helpful to use to print all images :
_, axs = plt.subplots(n_row, n_col, figsize=(12, 12))
axs = axs.flatten()
for img, ax in zip(imgs, axs):
ax.imshow(img)
plt.show()

You are plotting all your images on one axis. What you want ist to get a handle for each axis individually and plot your images there. Like so:
fig = plt.figure()
ax1 = fig.add_subplot(2,2,1)
ax1.imshow(...)
ax2 = fig.add_subplot(2,2,2)
ax2.imshow(...)
ax3 = fig.add_subplot(2,2,3)
ax3.imshow(...)
ax4 = fig.add_subplot(2,2,4)
ax4.imshow(...)
For more info have a look here: http://matplotlib.org/examples/pylab_examples/subplots_demo.html
For complex layouts, you should consider using gridspec: http://matplotlib.org/users/gridspec.html

If the images are in an array and you want to iterate through each element and print it, you can write the code as follows:
plt.figure(figsize=(10,10)) # specifying the overall grid size
for i in range(25):
plt.subplot(5,5,i+1) # the number of images in the grid is 5*5 (25)
plt.imshow(the_array[i])
plt.show()
Also note that I used subplot and not subplots. They're both different

Below is a complete function show_image_list() that displays images side-by-side in a grid. You can invoke the function with different arguments.
Pass in a list of images, where each image is a Numpy array. It will create a grid with 2 columns by default. It will also infer if each image is color or grayscale.
list_images = [img, gradx, grady, mag_binary, dir_binary]
show_image_list(list_images, figsize=(10, 10))
Pass in a list of images, a list of titles for each image, and other arguments.
show_image_list(list_images=[img, gradx, grady, mag_binary, dir_binary],
list_titles=['original', 'gradx', 'grady', 'mag_binary', 'dir_binary'],
num_cols=3,
figsize=(20, 10),
grid=False,
title_fontsize=20)
Here's the code:
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
def img_is_color(img):
if len(img.shape) == 3:
# Check the color channels to see if they're all the same.
c1, c2, c3 = img[:, : , 0], img[:, :, 1], img[:, :, 2]
if (c1 == c2).all() and (c2 == c3).all():
return True
return False
def show_image_list(list_images, list_titles=None, list_cmaps=None, grid=True, num_cols=2, figsize=(20, 10), title_fontsize=30):
'''
Shows a grid of images, where each image is a Numpy array. The images can be either
RGB or grayscale.
Parameters:
----------
images: list
List of the images to be displayed.
list_titles: list or None
Optional list of titles to be shown for each image.
list_cmaps: list or None
Optional list of cmap values for each image. If None, then cmap will be
automatically inferred.
grid: boolean
If True, show a grid over each image
num_cols: int
Number of columns to show.
figsize: tuple of width, height
Value to be passed to pyplot.figure()
title_fontsize: int
Value to be passed to set_title().
'''
assert isinstance(list_images, list)
assert len(list_images) > 0
assert isinstance(list_images[0], np.ndarray)
if list_titles is not None:
assert isinstance(list_titles, list)
assert len(list_images) == len(list_titles), '%d imgs != %d titles' % (len(list_images), len(list_titles))
if list_cmaps is not None:
assert isinstance(list_cmaps, list)
assert len(list_images) == len(list_cmaps), '%d imgs != %d cmaps' % (len(list_images), len(list_cmaps))
num_images = len(list_images)
num_cols = min(num_images, num_cols)
num_rows = int(num_images / num_cols) + (1 if num_images % num_cols != 0 else 0)
# Create a grid of subplots.
fig, axes = plt.subplots(num_rows, num_cols, figsize=figsize)
# Create list of axes for easy iteration.
if isinstance(axes, np.ndarray):
list_axes = list(axes.flat)
else:
list_axes = [axes]
for i in range(num_images):
img = list_images[i]
title = list_titles[i] if list_titles is not None else 'Image %d' % (i)
cmap = list_cmaps[i] if list_cmaps is not None else (None if img_is_color(img) else 'gray')
list_axes[i].imshow(img, cmap=cmap)
list_axes[i].set_title(title, fontsize=title_fontsize)
list_axes[i].grid(grid)
for i in range(num_images, len(list_axes)):
list_axes[i].set_visible(False)
fig.tight_layout()
_ = plt.show()

As per matplotlib's suggestion for image grids:
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from mpl_toolkits.axes_grid1 import ImageGrid
fig = plt.figure(figsize=(4., 4.))
grid = ImageGrid(fig, 111, # similar to subplot(111)
nrows_ncols=(2, 2), # creates 2x2 grid of axes
axes_pad=0.1, # pad between axes in inch.
)
for ax, im in zip(grid, image_data):
# Iterating over the grid returns the Axes.
ax.imshow(im)
plt.show()

I end up at this url about once a week. For those who want a little function that just plots a grid of images without hassle, here we go:
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
def plot_image_grid(images, ncols=None, cmap='gray'):
'''Plot a grid of images'''
if not ncols:
factors = [i for i in range(1, len(images)+1) if len(images) % i == 0]
ncols = factors[len(factors) // 2] if len(factors) else len(images) // 4 + 1
nrows = int(len(images) / ncols) + int(len(images) % ncols)
imgs = [images[i] if len(images) > i else None for i in range(nrows * ncols)]
f, axes = plt.subplots(nrows, ncols, figsize=(3*ncols, 2*nrows))
axes = axes.flatten()[:len(imgs)]
for img, ax in zip(imgs, axes.flatten()):
if np.any(img):
if len(img.shape) > 2 and img.shape[2] == 1:
img = img.squeeze()
ax.imshow(img, cmap=cmap)
# make 16 images with 60 height, 80 width, 3 color channels
images = np.random.rand(16, 60, 80, 3)
# plot them
plot_image_grid(images)

Sample code to visualize one random image from the dataset
def get_random_image(num):
path=os.path.join("/content/gdrive/MyDrive/dataset/",images[num])
image=cv2.imread(path)
return image
Call the function
images=os.listdir("/content/gdrive/MyDrive/dataset")
random_num=random.randint(0, len(images))
img=get_random_image(random_num)
plt.figure(figsize=(8,8))
plt.imshow(cv2.cvtColor(img,cv2.COLOR_BGR2RGB))
Display cluster of random images from the given dataset
#Making a figure containing 16 images
lst=random.sample(range(0,len(images)), 16)
plt.figure(figsize=(12,12))
for index,value in enumerate(lst):
img=get_random_image(value)
img_resized=cv2.resize(img,(400,400))
#print(path)
plt.subplot(4,4,index+1)
plt.imshow(img_resized)
plt.axis('off')
plt.tight_layout()
plt.subplots_adjust(wspace=0, hspace=0)
#plt.savefig(f"Images/{lst[0]}.png")
plt.show()

Plotting images present in a dataset
Here rand gives a random index value which is used to select a random image present in the dataset and labels has the integer representation for every image type and labels_dict is a dictionary holding key val information
fig,ax = plt.subplots(5,5,figsize = (15,15))
ax = ax.ravel()
for i in range(25):
rand = np.random.randint(0,len(image_dataset))
image = image_dataset[rand]
ax[i].imshow(image,cmap = 'gray')
ax[i].set_title(labels_dict[labels[rand]])
plt.show()

Trying to visualize a sorted table with matplotlib (parallel coordinates?)

I'm trying to visualize a sorted table (sorted on a column). My ideal result should be something like
visualization of a sorted table
Any suggestion on how to reach this goal with matplotlib?
I'have already tried with suggestions given here and here but I'm looking for something fancier like that in the attached image.
Thanks in advance,

Matplotlib does not support this directly, but it is fairly easy to replicate the plot that you have linked to.
The function below does something similar given a 2d array of data. It can be sorted or not, the function doesn't really care.
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib.colors as mcolors
import numpy as np
def sorted_table_plot(data, labels, categories, cmap=None, ax=None):
# check if an axes was supplied
if ax is None:
ax = plt.gca()
# check if a colormap was supplied
if cmap is None:
cmap = plt.cm.jet
# generate the grid arrays with the coordinates for the annotations
yy, xx = np.mgrid[:data.shape[0], :data.shape[1]]
x = xx.flatten()
y = yy.flatten()
d = data.flatten()
# a norm object which we will use with the colorbar
norm = plt.Normalize(d.min(), d.max())
# iterate over the data points and draw the labels
for di, xi, yi in zip(d, x, y):
color = cmap(norm(di))
hsv = mcolors.rgb_to_hsv(color[:3])
fc = 'w' if hsv[2] < 0.7 else 'k'
ax.annotate(str(di), xy=(xi,yi), xycoords="data",
va="center", ha="center", color=fc,
bbox=dict(boxstyle="circle", fc=color))
# iteratve over all the appearing values and draw the lines
for i in np.unique(data):
xi, yi = x[d==i], y[d==i]
idx = np.argsort(xi)
plt.plot(xi[idx], yi[idx], color=plt.cm.jet(norm(i)), lw=2)
# add the axes labels
ax.set_xticks(xx[0,:])
ax.set_xticklabels(categories)
ax.set_yticks(yy[:,0])
ax.set_yticklabels(labels)
# adjust the axes ranges
ax.set_xlim(xx[0,0] - 0.5, xx[-1,-1] + 0.5)
ax.set_ylim(yy[-1,-1] + 0.5, yy[0,0] - 0.5)
Now, you can simply call it on a data array. In the following I created a random array, since you didn't care to supply an example data set.
# fix the seed for reproducability
np.random.seed(2)
# create random data
data = np.tile(np.arange(1,8), (3,1)).T
labels = map(lambda x: 'label ' + str(x), data[:,1])
categories = map(lambda x: 'cat ' + str(x), np.arange(data.shape[1])+1)
for i in range(1,data.shape[1]):
# shuffle all but the first column
np.random.shuffle(data[:,i])
# call the function and show the plot
sorted_table_plot(data, labels, categories)
plt.show()
Result: