Combining plt.plot(x,y) with plt.boxplot()

Question

I'm trying to combine a normal matplotlib.pyplot plt.plot(x,y) with variable y as a function of variable x with a boxplot. However, I only want a boxplot on certain (variable) locations of x but this does not seem to work in matplotlib?

Answer 1

Are you wanting something like this? The positions kwarg to boxplot allows you to place the boxplots at arbitrary positions.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np

# Generate some data...
data = np.random.random((100, 5))
y = data.mean(axis=0)
x = np.random.random(y.size) * 10
x -= x.min()
x.sort()

# Plot a line between the means of each dataset
plt.plot(x, y, 'b-')

# Save the default tick positions, so we can reset them...
locs, labels = plt.xticks() 

plt.boxplot(data, positions=x, notch=True)

# Reset the xtick locations.
plt.xticks(locs)
plt.show()