Practical Business Python

Taking care of business, one python script at a time

Mon 30 April 2018

Choosing a Python Visualization Tool

Posted by Chris Moffitt in articles   

This brief article introduces a flowchart that shows how to select a python visualization tool for the job at hand. The criteria for choosing the tools is weighted more towards the “common” tools out there that have been in use for several years. There may be some debate about some of the recommendations but I believe this should be helpful for someone that is new to the python visualization landscape and trying to make a decision about where to invest their time to learn how to use one of these libraries.

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Mon 28 August 2017

Building a Bullet Graph in Python

Posted by Chris Moffitt in articles   

Lately I have been spending time reading about various visualization techniques with the goal of learning unique ways to display complex data. One of the interesting chart ideas I have seen is the bullet graph. Naturally, I wanted to see if I could create one in python but I could not find any existing implementations. This article will walk through why a bullet graph (aka bullet chart) is useful and how to build one using python and matplotlib.

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Tue 25 April 2017

Effectively Using Matplotlib

Posted by Chris Moffitt in articles   

The python visualization world can be a frustrating place for a new user. There are many different options and choosing the right one is a challenge. For example, even after 2 years, this article is one of the top posts that lead people to this site. In that article, I threw some shade at matplotlib and dismissed it during the analysis. However, after using tools such as pandas, scikit-learn, seaborn and the rest of the data science stack in python - I think I was a little premature in dismissing matplotlib. To be honest, I did not quite understand it and how to use it effectively in my workflow.

Now that I have taken the time to learn some of these tools and how to use them with matplotlib, I have started to see matplotlib as an indispensable tool. This post will show how I use matplotlib and provide some recommendations for users getting started or users who have not taken the time to learn matplotlib. I do firmly believe matplotlib is an essential part of the python data science stack and hope this article will help people understand how to use it for their own visualizations.

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