How to add a legend to a Matplotlib plot in Python
• 1 minAs you will see, you probably will need to add legends to your plots.
Matplotlib will add a legend, every time you make a plot with the label parameter and then call the axes.legend() function.
Here is an example
# For our example dataframe
import pandas as pd
# For our plot
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
# Generating sample data
df = pd.DataFrame({"col1":range(10)})
# Creating a canvas for our plots
fig, axes = plt.subplots(1,1, figsize=(12,6))
# We plot with a label parameter that will be in our legend.
axes.plot(df["col1"], label="Column 1")
# We tell matplotlib we want a legend on our main plot
axes.legend()
# We make our canvas tidy and clean
plt.tight_layout()
# We show the graph
plt.show()Here you are! You now know how to add a legend to your plot.
More on plots
If you want to know more about how to add labels, plot different types of plots, etc... check out the other articles I wrote on the topic, just here :
Matplotlib - The Python You Need
We gathered the only Python essentials that you will probably ever need.
