# Data wrangling and visualization with pandas, seaborn, and matplotlib¶

## Lesson preamble¶

### Learning Objectives¶

• Produce scatter plots, line plots, and histograms using seaborn and matplotlib.
• Understand how to graphically explore relationships between variables.
• Apply grids for faceting in seaborn.
• Set universal plot settings.
• Use seaborn grids with matplotlib functions

### Lesson outline¶

• Data visualization with matplotlib and seaborn (10 min)
• Visualizing one quantitative variable with multiple categorical variables (50 min)
• Visualizing the relationship of two quantitative variable with multiple categorical variables (40min)
• Using any plotting function with seaborn grids (20 min)
In [1]:
# Setup by importing the same data as in previous lecture
import pandas as pd

# or surveys = pd.read_csv("surveys.csv") if you saved it on your computer

In [2]:
surveys.head()

Out[2]:
record_id month day year plot_id species_id sex hindfoot_length weight genus species taxa plot_type
0 1 7 16 1977 2 NL M 32.0 NaN Neotoma albigula Rodent Control
1 72 8 19 1977 2 NL M 31.0 NaN Neotoma albigula Rodent Control
2 224 9 13 1977 2 NL NaN NaN NaN Neotoma albigula Rodent Control
3 266 10 16 1977 2 NL NaN NaN NaN Neotoma albigula Rodent Control
4 349 11 12 1977 2 NL NaN NaN NaN Neotoma albigula Rodent Control

## Data visualization in matplotlib and seaborn¶

There are many plotting packages in Python, making it possible to create diverse visualizations such as interactive web graphics, 3D animations, statistical visualizations, and map-based plots. A Google search for "Python graph gallery" or "Seaborn graph gallery" will turn up lots of examples of the diversity of plots that can be made.

Here, we will focus on two of the most useful for researchers: matplotlib, which is a robust, detail-oriented, low level plotting interface, and seaborn, which provides high level functions on top of matplotlib and allows the plotting calls to be expressed more in terms what is being explored in the underlying data rather than what graphical elements to add to the plot.

Instead of instructing the computer to "go through a data frame and plot any observations of speciesX in blue, any observations of speciesY in red, etc", the seaborn syntax is more similar to saying "color the data by species". Thanks to this functional way of interfacing with data, only minimal changes are required if the underlying data change or to switch the type of plot used for the visualization. It provides a language that facilitates thinking about data in ways that are conducive for exploratory analysis and allows for the creation of publication quality plots with minimal adjustments and tweaking.

The concepts of plotting with seaborn were introduced briefly already in the first lecture. To make a plot of the number of observations for each species, first import the library and then use the countplot() function. Before the first plot is created, the line %matplotlib inline is used to specify that all plots should show up in the notebook instead of in a separate window.

In [3]:
%matplotlib inline

In [4]:
import seaborn as sns

sns.countplot(y='species', data=surveys)

Out[4]:
<matplotlib.axes._subplots.AxesSubplot at 0x7f1efde4b908>

That's a lot of species... for convenience when introducing the following the plotting concept, the number of species will be limited to the four most abundant. To do this, the value_counts() method can be used to find out how observations belong to each species. We could also get the same information using surveys.groupby('species').size().

In [5]:
surveys['species'].value_counts()

Out[5]:
merriami           10596
penicillatus        3123
ordii               3027
baileyi             2891
megalotis           2609
spectabilis         2504
torridus            2249
flavus              1597
eremicus            1299
albigula            1252
leucogaster         1006
maniculatus          899
harrisi              437
bilineata            303
spilosoma            248
hispidus             179
sp.                   86
audubonii             75
fulvescens            75
brunneicapillus       50
taylori               46
ochrognathus          43
fulviventer           43
chlorurus             39
leucopus              36
squamata              16
melanocorys           13
intermedius            9
montanus               8
gramineus              8
undulatus              5
fuscus                 5
leucophrys             2
savannarum             2
tigris                 1
uniparens              1
scutalatus             1
tereticaudus           1
viridis                1
clarki                 1
Name: species, dtype: int64

The top four species names could be manually typed in to filter the surveys data frame.

In [6]:
surveys.loc[(surveys['species'] == 'merriami') |
(surveys['species'] == 'penicillatus') |
(surveys['species'] == 'ordii') |
(surveys['species'] == 'baileyi')].shape

Out[6]:
(19637, 13)

Comparing this number with the number of rows in the original data frame shows that it was filtered successfully.

In [7]:
surveys.shape

Out[7]:
(34786, 13)

However, it is rather tedious to type out the species names by hand and to do one comparison per species. Instead, the names of the most abundand species can be extract by using nlargest() and returning only the index (row names) of the top observations.

In [8]:
most_common_species = (
surveys['species']
.value_counts()
.nlargest(4)
.index
)
most_common_species

Out[8]:
Index(['merriami', 'penicillatus', 'ordii', 'baileyi'], dtype='object')

A subset can now be created from the data frame, including only those rows where the column 'species' matches any of the names in the most_common_species variable. pandas has a special isin() method for comparing a data frame column to an array-like object of names such as the index extracted above.

In [9]:
surveys.loc[surveys['species'].isin(most_common_species)].shape

Out[9]:
(19637, 13)

The number of observations is the same as with the manual filtering above, but this method is more succinct.

To facilitate plotting, any NA values will be dropped before assigning the resulting data frame to a new variable name.

In [10]:
surveys_common = surveys.loc[surveys['species'].isin(most_common_species)].dropna()
surveys_common.shape

Out[10]:
(18289, 13)

This abbreviated data frame can now be used for plotting.

In [11]:
sns.countplot(y='species', data=surveys_common)

Out[11]:
<matplotlib.axes._subplots.AxesSubplot at 0x7f1efa925fd0>

That's more manageable! The text is a little small, which can be changed with the set_context() function from seaborn, using a number above 1 for the fontscale parameter. The context parameter changes the size of object in the plots, such as the line widths, and will be left as the default notebook for now.

These option changes will apply to all plots made from now on. Think of it as changing a value in the options menu of a graphical software.

In [12]:
sns.set_context(context='notebook', font_scale=1.4)
sns.countplot(y='species', data=surveys_common)

Out[12]:
<matplotlib.axes._subplots.AxesSubplot at 0x7f1efa899da0>

To get a vertical plot, change y to x. With long label names, horizontal plots can be easier to read.

In [13]:
sns.countplot(x='species', data=surveys_common)

Out[13]:
<matplotlib.axes._subplots.AxesSubplot at 0x7f1efa7e7b00>

### Visualizing one quantitative variable across multiple categorical variables¶

seaborn can do much more advanced visualizations than counting observations. Next, the relationship between one quantitative and one categorical valuable will be explored while stratifying the data based on its remaining categorical variables. To start, let's visualize summary statistics of the weight variable distribution for these fours species with a boxplot.

In [14]:
sns.boxplot(x='weight', y='species', data=surveys_common)

Out[14]:
<matplotlib.axes._subplots.AxesSubplot at 0x7f1efa7b3d30>

The width of each box can be changed to make it look more appealing.

In [15]:
sns.boxplot(x='weight', y='species', data=surveys_common, width=0.4)

Out[15]:
<matplotlib.axes._subplots.AxesSubplot at 0x7f1efa931588>

The syntax is very similar to that of countplot(), but instead of just supplying one variable and asking seaborn to count the observations of that variable, the xy-variables are the categorical groups (the species) and the measurement of interest (the weight).

The aim of a box plot is to display a few statistics from the underlying distribution of one quantitative variable between the values of one categorical variable (the y-axis). The inclusion of multiple distribution statistics facilitates the comparison of more than just the mean + standard deviation (or another single measure of central tendency and variation). The seaborn box plots are so-called Tukey box plots by default, which means that the graphical elements correspond to the following statistics:

• The lines of the box represent the 25th, 50th (median), and 75th quantile in the data. These divide the data into four quartiles (0-25, 25-50, 50-75, 75-100).
• The whiskers represent 1.5 * the interquartile range (the distance between the 25th and 75th quantile).
• The flyers mark all individual observations that are outside the whiskers, which could be referred to as "outliers" (although there are many definitions of what could constitutes an outlier).

Most of these plot elements are configurable and could be set to represent different distribution statistics.

Another useful visualization for comparing distributions is the violinplot. Again, the syntax is the same as before, just change the plot name.

In [16]:
sns.violinplot (x='weight', y='species', data=surveys_common)

Out[16]:
<matplotlib.axes._subplots.AxesSubplot at 0x7f1efa717438>

Think of this plot as a smoothened version of the underlying histogram, that is then mirrored to give the violin-like shape. Where the violin is wider, there are more observations. The inner part is a boxplot with the median marked as a white dot. Comparisons with histograms and other distribution visualizations will be talked more about later in the workshop, but it is good to already keep in mind that although violinplots are great medium to large data sets, it can be misleading to use a smoothened distribution when there are very few observations, and it is probably better to show the individual data points instead of, or in addition to, the distribution plot.

The colors of the violins can be changed with the palette keyword.

In [17]:
sns.violinplot (x='weight', y='species', data=surveys_common, palette='Blues')

Out[17]:
<matplotlib.axes._subplots.AxesSubplot at 0x7f1efa58a5c0>

The color parameter can be used to set all violins in the same color.

In [18]:
sns.violinplot (x='weight', y='species', data=surveys_common, color='lightgrey')

Out[18]:
<matplotlib.axes._subplots.AxesSubplot at 0x7f1ef9949080>

An example for when a violin plot can be more informative than a box plot is to detect multimodal distributions, which could indicate that multiple values from an underlying confounding variable has been grouped together. This can be observed when comparing the weight of all animals in each type of trap used to catch them (the plot_type column).

In [19]:
sns.boxplot(x='weight', y='plot_type', data=surveys_common)

Out[19]:
<matplotlib.axes._subplots.AxesSubplot at 0x7f1ef9737128>
In [20]:
sns.violinplot(x='weight', y='plot_type', data=surveys_common)

Out[20]:
<matplotlib.axes._subplots.AxesSubplot at 0x7f1ef96320f0>

From the violin plot, it appears that there could be multiple distributions grouped together within each type of trap. There seems to be one distribution centered around 20 grams for all traps and one distribution centered around 45 grams (or 30 grams for Long-term krat exclosure). These observations could indeed be from the same distribution, but often when there are multiple bumps like this, it is a good idea to explore other variables in the data set, and see if there is a confounding variable contributing to the multimodality of the violin plot.

Since there appear to be 2-3 bumps in the distributions, it would be good to find a categorical variable in the data frame that has around the same number of unique values. The pandas method nunique() can count the number of unique values within each variable.

In [21]:
surveys_common.nunique().sort_values()

Out[21]:
taxa                   1
sex                    2
genus                  2
species_id             4
species                4
plot_type              5
month                 12
plot_id               24
year                  26
day                   31
hindfoot_length       40
weight                69
record_id          18289
dtype: int64

There are a few candidate variables that have a suitable number of unique values. A very effective approach for exploring multiple categorical variables in a data set is to plot so-called "small multiples" of the data, where the same type of plot is used for different subsets of the data. These plots are drawn in rows and columns forming a grid pattern, and can be referred to as a "lattice", "facet", or "trellis" plot.

Visualizing categorical variables in this manner is a key step in exploratory data analysis, and thus seaborn has a dedicated plot function for this, called factorplot() (categorical variables are sometimes referred to as "factors"). This plot can be used to plot the same violin plot as before, and easily spread the variables across the rows and columns, e.g. for the variable sex.

In [22]:
sns.factorplot(x='weight', y='plot_type', data=surveys_common, col='sex',
kind='violin')

Out[22]:
<seaborn.axisgrid.FacetGrid at 0x7f1ef9810470>

Sorting by the sex of the animal is probably not the most clever approach here since, the same sex from different species might very well have different weights. Let's try faceting the genus variable on separate rows.

In [23]:
sns.factorplot(x='weight', y='plot_type', data=surveys_common, col='sex',
row='genus', kind='violin', margin_titles=True)

Out[23]:
<seaborn.axisgrid.FacetGrid at 0x7f1ef971b0f0>

There are certainly differences in weight between the two genera, but it appears that the data still is not split into unimodal distributions. A likely explanation could be that there are multiple species within each genus and the weight is species-dependent. Let's check how many species there are per genus and how many observations there are in each.

In [24]:
surveys_common.groupby(['genus', 'species']).size()

Out[24]:
genus        species
Chaetodipus  baileyi         2803
penicillatus    2969
Dipodomys    merriami        9727
ordii           2790
dtype: int64

There are two species within each genus. If the mean weights for those species are different, it could indeed explain the additional bump in the Chaetodipus distributions above.

In [25]:
surveys_common.groupby(['genus', 'species'])['weight'].mean()

Out[25]:
genus        species
Chaetodipus  baileyi         31.739922
penicillatus    17.187942
Dipodomys    merriami        43.136013
ordii           48.867384
Name: weight, dtype: float64

A factor plot with the column variable set to 'species' instead of 'genus' might be able to separate the distributions.

In [26]:
sns.factorplot(x='weight', y='plot_type', data=surveys_common,
col='species', kind='violin')

Out[26]:
<seaborn.axisgrid.FacetGrid at 0x7f1ef91d61d0>

That looks pretty good! The plot can be made more appealing by having two columns per row and making each plot a bit wider.

In [27]:
sns.factorplot(x='weight', y='plot_type', data=surveys_common, col='species',
col_wrap=2, kind='violin', aspect=1.4)

Out[27]:
<seaborn.axisgrid.FacetGrid at 0x7f1ef9558860>

This is great, much of the variation in the weight data can be explained by the species observed. The only species where there still appears to be multimodal distributions (and thus possibly a confounding variable, is within "baileyi" (and potentially "ordii"), especially for the "Spectab exclosure". The "sex" variable was used in a previous plot, but it was never explored within tin each species. It is common with sexual dimorphism within a species, and this could include weight differences.

In [28]:
sns.factorplot(x='weight', y='plot_type', hue='sex', data=surveys_common,
col='species', col_wrap=2, kind='violin', aspect=1.4)

Out[28]:
<seaborn.axisgrid.FacetGrid at 0x7f1ef9558fd0>

It does indeed appear that there is a difference in mean and distribution between the sexes within the species "baileyi". Minor differences between the sexes within other species are also visible now although they were not big enough to show up in the initial violinplot. As a final beautification of this plot, the violins can be split down the middle to reduce clutter.

In [29]:
sns.factorplot(x='weight', y='plot_type', hue='sex', data=surveys_common,
col='species', col_wrap=2, kind='violin', aspect=1.4, split=True)

Out[29]:
<seaborn.axisgrid.FacetGrid at 0x7f1ef90eba20>

This clearly delivers the message and is easy to understand. One thing to notice here though is that the plot_type variable doesn't look like it has much effect on the weights.

#### Challenge¶

1. Create a violin plot of species vs weight, split down the middle by sex.
2. (Bonus) add the fifth and sixth most-common species to the plot.

A great aspect of the factorplot() function is that if there is a change of minds (or hearts) in what type of visualization to use, only minor modifications are needed to completely change the plot appearance. For example, plotting the mean and 95% CI, requires changing a couple of parameters to make the plot look good, but the code is largely identical.

In [30]:
sns.factorplot(x='weight', y='plot_type', hue='sex', data=surveys_common,
col='species', col_wrap=2, kind='point', aspect=1.4, join=False,
dodge=1.25)

Out[30]:
<seaborn.axisgrid.FacetGrid at 0x7f1ef33c8780>

To recap, factorplot() facilitates the representation of variables within data as different elements in the plot, such as the rows, column, x-axis positions, and colors. There is a great description on this in the seaborn documentation:

It is important to choose how variables get mapped to the plot structure such that the most important comparisons are easiest to make. As a general rule, it is easier to compare positions that are closer together, so the hue variable should be used for the most important comparisons. For secondary comparisons, try to share the quantitative axis (so, use col for vertical plots and row for horizontal plots). Note that, although it is possible to make rather complex plots using this function, in many cases you may be better served by created several smaller and more focused plots than by trying to stuff many comparisons into one figure

We talk more about the advantages and drawbacks of creating complex visualization with factorplot() in the second part of the challenge.

#### Challenge¶

1. Explore the same relationship as in the last violin plot, but visualize the results using a boxplot instead of a violinplot. Which variable(s) did you need to change and why?
2. (Bonus) Create a grid of countplots comparing the number of observations between sexes across months (with months on the x-axis for each plot). Create facets for each species and each plot_type. Is this a good plot for data explorations? What about for publication?

### Visualizing two quantitative variable across multiple categorical variables¶

In the last section, one quantitative variable was visualized across one or more categorical variables. Here, the relationship between two quantitative variables will be explored while stratifying the data based on its remaining categorical variables. First, reexamine the variables and their data types using the entire surveys data frame.

In [31]:
surveys.info()

<class 'pandas.core.frame.DataFrame'>
RangeIndex: 34786 entries, 0 to 34785
Data columns (total 13 columns):
record_id          34786 non-null int64
month              34786 non-null int64
day                34786 non-null int64
year               34786 non-null int64
plot_id            34786 non-null int64
species_id         34786 non-null object
sex                33038 non-null object
hindfoot_length    31438 non-null float64
weight             32283 non-null float64
genus              34786 non-null object
species            34786 non-null object
taxa               34786 non-null object
plot_type          34786 non-null object
dtypes: float64(2), int64(5), object(6)
memory usage: 3.5+ MB


The only two quantitative continuous variables are "weight" and "hindfoot_length". Although some of the others are integers, they are all categorical, such as month, day and year.

A scatter plot is the immediate choice for exploring pairwise relationships between continuous variables. seaborn has a convenient scatter plot matrix function, pairplot(), for plotting the pairwise relationships between all numerical variables in the data frame.

In [32]:
# Since this plot creates so many graphical elemments, the data set is subsampled to
# avoid waiting for the plot creation to finish. Setting random_state makes sure the
# same observations are sampled each time this is run.
surveys_sample = surveys.dropna().sample(1000, random_state=0)
sns.pairplot(surveys_sample)

Out[32]:
<seaborn.axisgrid.PairGrid at 0x7f1ef26f8588>