Reducing the distance between two boxplots

Question

I'm drawing the bloxplot shown below using python and matplotlib. Is there any way I can reduce the distance between the two boxplots on the X axis?

This is the code that I'm using to get the figure above:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from matplotlib import rcParams
rcParams['ytick.direction'] = 'out'
rcParams['xtick.direction'] = 'out'

fig = plt.figure()
xlabels = ["CG", "EG"]
ax = fig.add_subplot(111)
ax.boxplot([values_cg, values_eg])
ax.set_xticks(np.arange(len(xlabels))+1)
ax.set_xticklabels(xlabels, rotation=45, ha='right')
fig.subplots_adjust(bottom=0.3)
ylabels = yticks = np.linspace(0, 20, 5)
ax.set_yticks(yticks)
ax.set_yticklabels(ylabels)

ax.tick_params(axis='x', pad=10)
ax.tick_params(axis='y', pad=10)

plt.savefig(os.path.join(output_dir, "output.pdf"))

And this is an example closer to what I'd like to get visually (although I wouldn't mind if the boxplots were even a bit closer to each other):

Answer 1

You can either change the aspect ratio of plot or use the widths kwarg (doc) as such:

ax.boxplot([values_cg, values_eg], widths=1)

to make the boxes wider.

Answer 2

Try changing the aspect ratio using

ax.set_aspect(1.5) # or some other float

The larger then number, the narrower (and taller) the plot should be:

a circle will be stretched such that the height is num times the width. aspect=1 is the same as aspect=’equal’.

http://matplotlib.org/api/axes_api.html#matplotlib.axes.Axes.set_aspect