How to plot a vertical area plot with pandas

Question

Is there a straight forward way to plot an area plot using pandas, but orient the plot vertically?

for example to plot an area plot horizontally I can do this:

import pandas as pd
import numpy as np

df = pd.DataFrame(np.random.rand(10, 4), columns=['a', 'b', 'c', 'd'])
df.plot(kind='area');

I can plot a bar plot vertically with 'barh'

df.plot(kind='barh');

But I can't figure out a straightforward way to get a area plot vertical

Answer 1

The reason pandas does not provide a vertical stack plot is that matplotlib stackplot is only for horizontal stacks.

However, a stackplot is nothing but a filled lineplot in the end. So you would get the desired plot by plotting the data with fill_betweenx().

import pandas as pd
import numpy as np; np.random.rand(42)
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

df = pd.DataFrame(np.random.rand(10, 4), columns=['a', 'b', 'c', 'd'])

fig, ax = plt.subplots()

data = np.cumsum(df.values, axis=1)
for i, col in enumerate(df.columns):
    ax.fill_betweenx(df.index, data[:,i], label=col, zorder=-i)
ax.margins(y=0)
ax.set_xlim(0, None)
ax.set_axisbelow(False)

ax.legend()


plt.show()