Question

I can generate a hexbin diagram like this (code taken from http://matplotlib.org/examples/pylab_examples/hexbin_demo.html)

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.cm as cm
import  matplotlib.pyplot as plt

n = 100000
x = np.random.standard_normal(n)
y = 2.0 + 3.0 * x + 4.0 * np.random.standard_normal(n)
xmin = x.min()
xmax = x.max()
ymin = y.min()
ymax = y.max()

plt.subplots_adjust(hspace=0.5)
plt.subplot(121)
plt.hexbin(x,y, cmap=cm.jet)
plt.axis([xmin, xmax, ymin, ymax])
plt.title("Hexagon binning")
cb = plt.colorbar()
cb.set_label('counts')

plt.subplot(122)
plt.hexbin(x,y,bins='log', cmap=cm.jet)
plt.axis([xmin, xmax, ymin, ymax])
plt.title("With a log color scale")
cb = plt.colorbar()
cb.set_label('log10(N)')

plt.show()

Is there any way to label the x and y axes of the hexbin with axis names? I want something like “x-label” to show up below the x axis numbers, and “ylabel” to show up to the left of the y axis numbers. This will be in addition to the label on the colorbar.

Answer 1

You can use xlabel and ylabel matplotlib commands:

plt.xlabel('x-label')
plt.ylabel('y-label')