Question

I have a numpy array of ints representing time periods, which I’m currently plotting in a histogram to get a nice distribution graph, using the following code:

ax.hist(data,bins=100,range=(minimum,maximum),facecolor="r")

However I’m trying to modify this graph to represent the exact same data using a line instead of bars, so I can overlay more samples to the same plot and have them be clear (otherwise the bars overlap each other). What I’ve tried so far is to collate the data array into an array of tuples containing (time, count), and then plot it using

ax.plot(data[:,0],data[:,1],color="red",lw=2)

However that’s not giving me anything close, as I can’t accurately simulate the bins option of the histogram in my plot. Is there a better way to do this?

Answer 1

You can save the output of hist and then plot it.

import numpy as np
import pylab as p

data=np.array(np.random.rand(1000))
y,binEdges=np.histogram(data,bins=100)
bincenters = 0.5*(binEdges[1:]+binEdges[:-1])
p.plot(bincenters,y,'-')
p.show()