Legends, Titles, and Labels with Matplotlib

In this tutorial, we're going to cover legends, titles, and labels within Matplotlib. A lot of times, graphs can be self-explanatory, but having a title to the graph, labels on the axis, and a legend that explains what each line is can be necessary.

To start:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

x = [1,2,3]
y = [5,7,4]

x2 = [1,2,3]
y2 = [10,14,12]

This way, we have two lines that we can plot. Next:

plt.plot(x, y, label='First Line')
plt.plot(x2, y2, label='Second Line')

Here, we plot as we've seen already, only this time we add another parameter "label." This allows us to assign a name to the line, which we can later show in the legend. The rest of our code:

plt.xlabel('Plot Number')
plt.ylabel('Important var')
plt.title('Interesting Graph\nCheck it out')
plt.legend()
plt.show()

With plt.xlabel and plt.ylabel, we can assign labels to those respective axis. Next, we can assign the plot's title with plt.title, and then we can invoke the default legend with plt.legend(). The resulting graph:

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The next tutorial: Bar Charts and Histograms with Matplotlib