If you are trying to solve a problem with programming, you may have several solutions to get the same result.

A basic idea that we don't get at the beginning because we look for that perfect solution.

It doesn’t exist.

It would be best to start thinking about choosing the "one" option, not "the" option.

Let’s say that we are facing the following problem: visualise two variables with a scatterplot.

import pandas as pd

df = pd.read_csv('https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mwaskom/seaborn-data/master/tips.csv')
df.head()

In Python, you’ve got 3 libraries that can make a scatterplot:

1. matplotlib
2. seaborn
3. plotly

Let’s observe the differences:

Matplotlib

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

plt.scatter(x='total_bill', y='tip', data=df)

Seaborn

import seaborn as sns

sns.scatterplot(x='total_bill', y='tip', data=df)

Plotly

import plotly.express as px

px.scatter(data_frame=df, x='total_bill', y='tip')

Takeaways

1. matplotlib allows you to create custom plots, but you need to write more code.
2. seaborn automates the plot so that you don’t need to write more lines. For example, seaborn added the x & y axis labels by default. matplotlib didn’t.
3. plotly allows you to interact with the plot. Give it a try and hover the mouse over the points.

If you are to make a plot for an online post, you may like to use plotly due to its interactivity. Nevertheless, you wouldn’t use it if you were writing a paper article.

I teach Python, R, Statistics & Data Science. I like to produce content that helps people to understand these topics better.

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