I have a figure with a log axis
and I would like to relabel the axis ticks with logs of the values, rather than the values themselves
The way I've accomplished this is with
plt.axes().set_xticklabels([math.log10(x) for x in plt.axes().get_xticks()])
but I wonder if there isn't a less convoluted way to do this.
What is the correct idiom for systematically relabeling ticks on matplotlib
plots with values computed from the original tick values?
Look into the Formatter
classes. Unless you are putting text on your ticks you should almost never directly use set_xticklabels
or set_yticklabels
. This completely de-couples your tick labels from you data. If you adjust the view limits, the tick labels will remain the same.
In your case, a formatter already exists for this:
fig, ax = plt.subplots()
ax.loglog(np.logspace(0, 5), np.logspace(0, 5)**2)
ax.xaxis.set_major_formatter(matplotlib.ticker.LogFormatterExponent())
matplotlib.ticker.LogFormatterExponent
doc
In general you can use FuncFormatter
. For an example of how to use FuncFomatter
see matplotlib: change yaxis tick labels which one of many examples floating around SO.
A concise example for what you want, lifting exactly from JoeKington in the comments,:
ax.xaxis.set_major_formatter(
FuncFormatter(lambda x, pos: '{:0.1f}'.format(log10(x))))