how would I plot the data below with the x axis as Year & Month? Each Year-month combination has a unique monthly count (Y). I am unsure how to proceed, given than they are in different columns, should I combine them first?
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- $\begingroup$The answer to this question might be helpful: stackoverflow.com/questions/53259415/…$\endgroup$– JonathanCommentedFeb 12, 2020 at 13:51
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1 Answer
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Using matplotlib, you could create a custom tick formatter to show the right ticks. The year and month can either be fetched from the dataframe via the index (df.iloc[value]['Month']) or just be calculated.
Here is an example. You can also read the month name in the status bar when you hover over a position in the plot. The xticks (the positions where to have a tick with a label) can either be set automatically or manually.
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt import numpy as np import pandas as pd month_name = ['Jan', 'Feb', 'Mar', 'Apr', 'May', 'Jun', 'Jul', 'Aug', 'Sep', 'Oct', 'Nov', 'Dec'] def format_func(value, tick_number): value = int(value) year = 2001 + value // 12 month = value % 12 # return f"{month+1}-{year}" return f"{month_name[month]}-{year}" N = 229 # create a dataframe resembling the example df = pd.DataFrame({'Year': np.repeat(range(2001, 2021), 12)[:N], 'Month': np.tile(range(1, 13), N // 12 + 1)[:N], 'monthlycount': np.random.binomial(5000, .7, N) }) plt.plot(df['monthlycount'], marker='o', c='crimson') plt.xlim(0, N - 1) plt.xticks(range(0, N, 12), rotation=20) # set major ticks every year # plt.gca().set_xticks(range(0, N, 12), rotation=30) plt.gca().set_xticks(range(0, N), minor=True) plt.gca().xaxis.set_major_formatter(plt.FuncFormatter(format_func)) plt.tight_layout() plt.show() 
