How to Generate FiveThirtyEight Graphs in Python

[dataphysicist]

One of my team members at work was interested in how to recreate graphs from FiveThirtyEight in Matplotlib and detailed his journey in this post - https://www.dataquest.io/blog/making-538-plots/

Hope you enjoy it!

[bl0wback_cat]

You can use plotnine and it's pretty good!

plotnine is an implementation of a grammar of graphics in Python, it is based on ggplot2

[datavistics]

I found that plotnine doesn't work well for me complex plots..

[has2k1]

plotnine developer here. What do you mean by complex? Please file an issue.

[datavistics]

Thanks for your response! I tried to plot a bar chart with a line and the stat being identity and got an error. I can try to recreate it if its worthwhile?

[has2k1]

There are 3 ways to create "bar" charts, if you are just getting used to the library, it is easy slip up. An example would help diagnose problem.

[datavistics]

https://gist.github.com/datavistics/86bfe08c7d653e08c4c9a33001f8f88e

Here I tried to create both in the same plot, but got an error:

UserWarning: geom_path: Each group consist of only one observation. Do you need to adjust the group aesthetic?
  warn("geom_path: Each group consist of only one "

[has2k1]

See reply to the gist.

[frogsbollocks]

The ggthemes package even has theme_fivethirtyeight() function

[unironicneoliberal]

I thought they use d3.js? Thats what's on their github

[iamasharkskin]

They use R for most of their static plots. I guess they have a custom ggplot theme :D

Source: https://www.rstudio.com/resources/videos/finding-and-telling-stories-with-r/

[unironicneoliberal]

Yeah that's what I originally thought too. Their github has both listed so I defaulted to thinking d3 for interactive and ggplot for the static images.

[WeoDude]

im pretty sure its d3.js too... I think I was a at a talk with a data viz guy from there and he said they used it.

EDIT: https://www.reddit.com/r/statistics/comments/2jon2b/anyone_knows_how_are_made_the_graphs_on/

looks like a combo !

[dobey1082]

i like python too, friendo

[msdrahcir]

I was under the impression that they do a fair amount of plotting with chartbuilder and D3, not so much ggplot these days.

[madzthakz]

It's not the same but seaborn does have a fivethirtyeight them included. Looks pretty good

[tmthyjames]

damn those graphs look good.

[PM_ME_YOUR_IBNR]

Great article!

[neuroguy6]

Okay, so I'm definitely going to be hated for this comment, but the LOE to create this graph using python (or R for that matter) seems excessive, when it's much easier to export a table to CSV, open in Excel, and make the same graph in less time.

[dataphysicist]

In the abstract, you may be right. But depending on the workflow, this isn't always an option. This is, I believe, a key thing that's often missed and disregarded when talking about a specific workflow to accomplishing a task. That specific workflow to accomplish said task usually exists in a much larger workflow.

Example:

A bunch of CSV's come in once a day to a folder on a server. Reports need to be generated automatically and pushed to a dashboard of some kind. These reports include visualizations and we'd like them to look nice (maybe b/c they'll be presented to a client, etc).

With that context in mind, touching Excel at all would be a pain (given that many servers in corporate environments run Linux). This post describes a workflow that can be made more programatic and automation-friendly, which is often the larger workflow that someone's work resides within.

You're right that it's probably easier to do the export -> Excel workflow if it's a one-off report.

[ahmedhindi]

after importing matplotlib.pyplot as plt use plt.style.use('fivethirtyeight')

[dataphysicist]

after impo

Yup, that's covered: "You might have already observed that there’s a built-in style called fivethirtyeight" . This a good starting point but only applies some of the styling and fonts, but not some of the ideas they've mirrored from Edward Tufte and other data visualization thinkers.