Seaborn tsplot not showing data

Question

I'm trying to use seaborn to make a simple tsplot, but for reasons that aren't clear to me nothing shows up when I run the code. Here's a minimal example:

import numpy as np
import seaborn as sns
import pandas as pd

df = pd.DataFrame({'value': np.random.rand(31), 'time': range(31)})

ax = sns.tsplot(data=df, value='value', time='time')
sns.plt.show()

Usually tsplot you supply multiple data points for each time point, but does it just not work if you only supply one?

I know matplotlib can be used to do this pretty easily, but I wanted to use seaborn for some of its other functionality.

Answer 1

You are missing individual units. When using a data frame the idea is that multiple timeseries for the same unit have been recorded, which can be individually identifier in the data frame. The error is then calculated based on the different units.

So for one series only, you can get it working again like this:

df = pd.DataFrame({'value': np.random.rand(31), 'time': range(31)})
df['subject'] = 0
sns.tsplot(data=df, value='value', time='time', unit='subject')

Just to see how the error is computed, look at this example:

dfs = []
for i in range(10):
    df = pd.DataFrame({'value': np.random.rand(31), 'time': range(31)})
    df['subject'] = i
    dfs.append(df)
all_dfs = pd.concat(dfs)
sns.tsplot(data=all_dfs, value='value', time='time', unit='subject')