matplotlib Plotting Cookbook

Plotting boxplots

Boxplot allows you to compare distributions of values by conveniently showing the median, quartiles, maximum, and minimum of a set of values.

How to do it...

The following script shows a boxplot for 100 random values drawn from a normal distribution:

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

data = np.random.randn(100)

plt.boxplot(data)
plt.show()

A boxplot will appear that represents the samples we drew from the random distribution. Since the code uses a randomly generated dataset, the resulting figure will change slightly every time the script is run.

The preceding script will display the following graph:

How it works...