Question

Suppose I have three data sets:

X = [1,2,3,4]
Y1 = [4,8,12,16]
Y2 = [1,4,9,16]

I can scatter plot this:

from matplotlib import pyplot as plt
plt.scatter(X,Y1,color='red')
plt.scatter(X,Y2,color='blue')
plt.show()

How can I do this with 10 sets?

I searched for this and could find any reference to what I’m asking.

Edit: clarifying (hopefully) my question

If I call scatter multiple times, I can only set the same color on each scatter. Also, I know I can set a color array manually but I’m sure there is a better way to do this.
My question is then, “How can I automatically scatter-plot my several data sets, each with a different color.

If that helps, I can easily assign a unique number to each data set.

Answer 1

I don’t know what you mean by ‘manually’. You can choose a colourmap and make a colour array easily enough:

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

x = np.arange(10)
ys = [i+x+(i*x)**2 for i in range(10)]

colors = cm.rainbow(np.linspace(0, 1, len(ys)))
for y, c in zip(ys, colors):
    plt.scatter(x, y, color=c)

Or you can make your own colour cycler using itertools.cycle and specifying the colours you want to loop over, using next to get the one you want. For example, with 3 colours:

import itertools

colors = itertools.cycle(["r", "b", "g"])
for y in ys:
    plt.scatter(x, y, color=next(colors))

Come to think of it, maybe it’s cleaner not to use zip with the first one neither:

colors = iter(cm.rainbow(np.linspace(0, 1, len(ys))))
for y in ys:
    plt.scatter(x, y, color=next(colors))