Matplotlib Tutorial

Matplotlib - Ticks and Tick Labels



Ticks

Ticks are the markers denoting data points on axes. In most situation, it is generally sufficient to let the Matplotlib automatically decide the ticks. However, it is possible to set the ticks explicitly by using Axes.set_xticks() and Axes.set_yticks() functions.

Syntax

#sets the x-axis tick locations
Axes.set_xticks(self, ticks, minor=False)

#sets the y-axis tick locations
Axes.set_yticks(self, ticks, minor=False)

Parameters

ticks Required. Specify list of tick locations.
minor Optional. If False, set the major ticks; if True, the minor ticks.

Tick Labels

Similarly, labels corresponding to tick marks can be set by using Axes.set_xlabels() and Axes.set_ylabels() functions respectively.

Syntax

#Set the x-axis labels with list of string labels
Axes.set_xticklabels(self, labels, minor=False)

#Set the y-axis labels with list of string labels
Axes.set_yticklabels(self, labels, minor=False)

Parameters

labels Required. Specify the label texts.
minor Optional. If False, set the major ticklabels; if True, the minor ticklabels.

Example: setting ticks and tick labels

In the example below, user-defined ticks and tick labels are used.

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

#creating an array of values between
#0 to 10 with a difference of 0.1
x = np.arange(0, 10, 0.1)
y = np.sin(x)

fig, ax = plt.subplots()

#plotting curves
ax.plot(x, y) 

#formatting axes
ax.set_title("Sine Wave") 
ax.set_xlabel("x")
ax.set_ylabel("y = sin(x)")

#setting ticks and tick labels
pi = math.pi
ax.set_xticks([0, pi, 2*pi, 3*pi])
ax.set_xticklabels(['0', 'π', '2π', '3π'])

#displaying the figure
plt.show()

The output of the above code will be:

Python setting ticks and tick labels in a plot