Brtdku

I want to make x and y axes be of equal lengths (i.e the plot minus the legend should be square ). I wish to plot the legend outside (I have already been able to put legend outside the box). The span of x axis in the data (x_max - x_min) is not the same as the span of y axis in the data (y_max - y_min).

This is the relevant part of the code that I have at the moment:

plt.legend(loc='center left', bbox_to_anchor=(1, 0.5), fontsize=15 )

plt.axis('equal')

plt.tight_layout()

The following link is an example of an output plot that I am getting : plot

How can I do this?

Would plt.axis('scaled') be what you're after? That would produce a square plot, if the data limits are of equal difference.

If they are not, you could get a square plot by setting the aspect of the axes to the ratio of xlimits and ylimits.

import numpy as np

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt



fig, (ax1, ax2) = plt.subplots(1,2)



ax1.plot([-2.5, 2.5], [-4,13], "s-")

ax1.axis("scaled")



ax2.plot([-2.5, 2.5], [-4,13], "s-")

ax2.set_aspect(np.diff(ax2.get_xlim())/np.diff(ax2.get_ylim()))



plt.show()

One option you have to is manually set the limits, assuming that you know the size of your dataset.

axes = plt.gca()

axes.set_xlim([xmin,xmax])

axes.set_ylim([ymin,ymax])

A better option would be to iterate through your data to find the maximum x- and y-coordinates, take the greater of those two numbers, add a little bit more to that value to act as a buffer, and set xmax and ymax to that new value. You can use a similar method to set xmin and ymin: instead of finding the maximums, find the minimums.

To put the legend outside of the plot, I would look at this question: How to put the legend out of the plot

Something that hasn't been mentioned yet but which can give you a square output is to simply set the size of the figure using figsize=(x,y) in constructing the figure. For example,

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

import numpy as np

import random



x = np.arange(0, 10, 0.2)

y = np.zeros((len(x)))

for ii in range(len(x)):

    y[ii] = random.random()*20



fig = plt.figure(figsize=(5,5), dpi=150)

plt.scatter(x, y, label="Data", marker="+")

plt.title("Title")

plt.legend(bbox_to_anchor=(1.01, 0.5), loc="center left", borderaxespad=0.)

plt.show()

Important note This method will not produce a square plot if plt.tight_layout() is also used - doing so will always squeeze the ticklabels and anything else that is added (title, legend, axis labels, etc) into the region created by figsize thereby reducing the aspect ratio below 1:1.