matplotlib boxplot color

Question

I'm trying to create a box & whisker plot of a set of data binning y versus x. I found an useful example in making binned boxplot in matplotlib with numpy and scipy in Python. The question is now very simple. How can I specify the color of the boxes in matplotlib.pyplot.boxplot as I would like to set it transparent in order to let the reader also to see the original data. I know there exists the example shown in http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/examples/pylab_examples/boxplot_demo2.html but is anything simpler than this? It looks strange the impossibility to set the color of the boxes directly in boxplot Thank you in advance

Answer 1

You could just render the original data as a scatter plot behind the boxplot and then hide the fliers of the boxplot.

import pylab
import numpy

pylab.figure()

data = [numpy.random.normal(i, size=50) for i in xrange(5)]

for x, y in enumerate(data):
    pylab.scatter([x + 1 for i in xrange(50)], y, alpha=0.5, edgecolors='r', marker='+')

bp = pylab.boxplot(data)
pylab.setp(bp['boxes'], color='black')
pylab.setp(bp['whiskers'], color='black')
pylab.setp(bp['fliers'], marker='None')

pylab.xlim(0,6)

pylab.show()