Plotly Express: Clearly Explained

Name

Oluwaseun Adeojo

Published on 8/17/2023

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Data visualization is a crucial aspect of data analysis and machine learning. It allows us to understand complex data sets and draw insights that might not be apparent from raw data. One tool that has made this process incredibly straightforward is Plotly Express.

Plotly Express is a high-level interface for data visualization. It simplifies the process of creating complex plots and makes it easier for beginners to start creating stunning visualizations. Whether you're a beginner or an experienced programmer, this comprehensive guide will show you how to unlock the full potential of Plotly Express.

What is Plotly Express?

Plotly Express, often abbreviated as PX, is a wrapper for Plotly.py that simplifies the process of creating complex plots. It provides a high-level interface to the Plotly library, which means you can create stunning visualizations with fewer lines of code.

Plotly Express supports a wide variety of charts, including scatter plots, line charts, bar charts, and more. It also supports animations, making it possible to create interactive plots that change over time or in response to user interactions.

One of the key features of Plotly Express is its integration with Pandas DataFrames. This means you can directly pass DataFrame objects to Plotly Express functions, making it easier to work with large datasets.

Plotly Express vs Plotly Graph Objects

While Plotly Express and Plotly Graph Objects are both part of the Plotly ecosystem, they serve different purposes. Plotly Graph Objects is a low-level interface that provides more control and customization options. On the other hand, Plotly Express is a high-level interface that simplifies the process of creating plots.

For beginners, Plotly Express is often the better choice. It's easier to use and requires less code to create complex visualizations. However, if you need more control over your plots or want to create custom visualizations, you might find Plotly Graph Objects more suitable.

Types of Visualizations with Plotly Express

Plotly Express supports a wide variety of visualizations. Here are some of the most common types:

1. Scatter Plots: Scatter plots are used to display the relationship between two numerical variables. They are great for identifying trends, patterns, and outliers in your data.

2. Line Charts: Line charts are used to display data over time. They are commonly used in time series analysis and to track changes over time.

3. Bar Charts: Bar charts are used to compare the frequency, count, or other characteristics of different categories. They are great for categorical data.

4. Histograms: Histograms are used to display the distribution of a single numerical variable. They are great for understanding the spread and skewness of your data.

5. Box Plots: Box plots are used to display the statistical summary of a numerical variable. They show the median, quartiles, and potential outliers in your data.

6. Heatmaps: Heatmaps are used to display the correlation between two or more variables. They are great for identifying patterns and clusters in your data.

Each of these visualizations can be created with just a few lines of code in Plotly Express. In the next section, we'll look at some examples of how to create these plots.

Importing Plotly Express into Python

Before you can start creating visualizations with Plotly Express, you'll need to import it into your Python environment. If you haven't installed Plotly yet, you can do so using pip:

pip install plotly

Once Plotly is installed, you can import Plotly Express as follows:

import plotly.express as px

With Plotly Express imported, you're now ready to start creating stunning visualizations!

Creating Visualizations with Plotly Express

Creating visualizations with Plotly Express is straightforward. Let's start by creating a simple scatter plot. First, we'll need some data. For this example, we'll use the built-in iris dataset:

df = px.data.iris()

Now, we can create a scatter plot of sepal width vs sepal length:

fig = px.scatter(df, x="sepal_width", y="sepal_length")
fig.show()

In just three lines of code, we've created a scatter plot! But Plotly Express can do much more than just scatter plots. Let's create a line chart using the gapminder dataset:

df = px.data.gapminder().query("country=='Canada'")
fig = px.line(df, x="year", y="lifeExp", title='Life expectancy in Canada')
fig.show()

Again, in just a few lines of code, we've created a line chart that shows the life expectancy in Canada over time.

Customizing Plots in Plotly Express

One of the strengths of Plotly Express is its customization options. You can easily change the colors, labels, and other aspects of your plots.

For example, let's customize our scatter plot from earlier. We'll color the points by species and change the labels:

fig = px.scatter(df, x="sepal_width", y="sepal_length", color="species",
                 labels={
                     "sepal_width": "Sepal Width (cm)",
                     "sepal_length": "Sepal Length (cm)",
                     "species": "Species"
                 },
                 title="Iris Sepal Dimensions")
fig.show()

With these customizations, our plot is much more informative. We can easily distinguish between the species, and the labels are clearer.

Plotly Express vs Other Libraries

When it comes to data visualization in Python, there are several libraries to choose from. Two of the most popular ones, apart from Plotly Express, are Matplotlib and Seaborn.

Matplotlib is a low-level library that offers a great deal of flexibility at the cost of simplicity. While you can create almost any visualization you can think of, it often requires a lot of code to do so.

Seaborn is a high-level library that is built on top of Matplotlib. It simplifies the process of creating more complex visualizations, but it still requires a fair amount of code for customization.

Plotly Express, on the other hand, strikes a balance between simplicity and flexibility. It allows you to create complex visualizations with minimal code, and it also offers a wide range of customization options. Plus, the interactive nature of Plotly Express plots is a significant advantage over static plots created with Matplotlib or Seaborn.

Want to quickly create Data Visualization from Python Pandas Dataframe with No code?

PyGWalker is a Python library for Exploratory Data Analysis with Visualization. PyGWalker (opens in a new tab) can simplify your Jupyter Notebook data analysis and data visualization workflow, by turning your pandas dataframe (and polars dataframe) into a Tableau-style User Interface for visual exploration.

(opens in a new tab)

Adding Legends and Other Elements in Plotly Express

Adding legends, titles, and labels to your Plotly Express plots is straightforward. Most of this can be done directly within the plotting function itself. For example, to add a title to your plot, you can use the title parameter:

fig = px.scatter(df, x="sepal_width", y="sepal_length", color="species", title="Iris Sepal Dimensions")
fig.show()

To add axis labels, you can use the labels parameter as we've seen in the previous examples. Legends are automatically added when you use the color parameter to distinguish between different categories in your data.

For more advanced customizations, you can use the update_layout method:

fig.update_layout(
    title="Iris Sepal Dimensions",
    xaxis_title="Sepal Width (cm)",
    yaxis_title="Sepal Length (cm)",
    legend_title="Species",
    font=dict(
        family="Courier New, monospace",
        size=18,
        color="RebeccaPurple"
    )
)

This allows you to customize the font, size, and color of your title, labels, and legend.

Now, let's move on to some frequently asked questions about Plotly Express.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is Plotly Express? Plotly Express is a high-level data visualization library in Python. It's a wrapper for Plotly.py that simplifies the process of creating complex plots.

2. How does Plotly Express differ from Plotly Graph Objects? Plotly Express is a high-level interface to Plotly, which means you can create complex plots with less code. Plotly Graph Objects, on the other hand, is a low-level interface that provides more control and customization options.

3. What types of visualizations can be created with Plotly Express? Plotly Express supports a wide variety of visualizations, including scatter plots, line charts, bar charts, histograms, box plots, and heatmaps. It also supports animations.

4. Is Plotly Express suitable for beginners? Yes, Plotly Express is designed to be user-friendly and requires less code to create complex visualizations, making it a great choice for beginners.

5. How can Plotly Express be imported into Python? You can import Plotly Express into Python using the following line of code: import plotly.express as px.