Matplotlib Fill Between

Introduction

Matplotlib is a data visualization library in Python programming language. It is used to create static, animated, and interactive visualizations in Python. In this lab, you will learn how to use fill_between function from Matplotlib to fill the area between two lines.

VM Tips

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Sometimes, you may need to wait a few seconds for Jupyter Notebook to finish loading. The validation of operations cannot be automated because of limitations in Jupyter Notebook.

If you face issues during learning, feel free to ask Labby. Provide feedback after the session, and we will promptly resolve the problem for you.

Skills Graph

Basic Usage

The fill_between function can be used to fill the area between two lines. The parameters y1 and y2 can be scalars, indicating a horizontal boundary at the given y-values. If only y1 is given, y2 defaults to 0.

x = np.arange(0.0, 2, 0.01)
y1 = np.sin(2 * np.pi * x)
y2 = 0.8 * np.sin(4 * np.pi * x)

fig, (ax1, ax2, ax3) = plt.subplots(3, 1, sharex=True, figsize=(6, 6))

ax1.fill_between(x, y1)
ax1.set_title('fill between y1 and 0')

ax2.fill_between(x, y1, 1)
ax2.set_title('fill between y1 and 1')

ax3.fill_between(x, y1, y2)
ax3.set_title('fill between y1 and y2')
ax3.set_xlabel('x')
fig.tight_layout()

Confidence Bands

A common application for fill_between is the indication of confidence bands. fill_between uses the colors of the color cycle as the fill color. It is therefore often a good practice to lighten the color by making the area semi-transparent using alpha.

N = 21
x = np.linspace(0, 10, 11)
y = [3.9, 4.4, 10.8, 10.3, 11.2, 13.1, 14.1,  9.9, 13.9, 15.1, 12.5]

## fit a linear curve and estimate its y-values and their error.
a, b = np.polyfit(x, y, deg=1)
y_est = a * x + b
y_err = x.std() * np.sqrt(1/len(x) +
                          (x - x.mean())**2 / np.sum((x - x.mean())**2))

fig, ax = plt.subplots()
ax.plot(x, y_est, '-')
ax.fill_between(x, y_est - y_err, y_est + y_err, alpha=0.2)
ax.plot(x, y, 'o', color='tab:brown')

Selectively Filling Horizontal Regions

The parameter where allows to specify the x-ranges to fill. It's a boolean array with the same size as x. Only x-ranges of contiguous True sequences are filled. As a result, the range between neighboring True and False values is never filled. It is therefore recommended to set interpolate=True unless the x-distance of the data points is fine enough so that the above effect is not noticeable.

x = np.array([0, 1, 2, 3])
y1 = np.array([0.8, 0.8, 0.2, 0.2])
y2 = np.array([0, 0, 1, 1])

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

ax1.set_title('interpolation=False')
ax1.plot(x, y1, 'o--')
ax1.plot(x, y2, 'o--')
ax1.fill_between(x, y1, y2, where=(y1 > y2), color='C0', alpha=0.3)
ax1.fill_between(x, y1, y2, where=(y1 < y2), color='C1', alpha=0.3)

ax2.set_title('interpolation=True')
ax2.plot(x, y1, 'o--')
ax2.plot(x, y2, 'o--')
ax2.fill_between(x, y1, y2, where=(y1 > y2), color='C0', alpha=0.3,
                 interpolate=True)
ax2.fill_between(x, y1, y2, where=(y1 <= y2), color='C1', alpha=0.3,
                 interpolate=True)
fig.tight_layout()

Selectively Marking Horizontal Regions Across the Whole Axes

The same selection mechanism can be applied to fill the full vertical height of the axes. To be independent of y-limits, we add a transform that interprets the x-values in data coordinates and the y-values in axes coordinates. The following example marks the regions in which the y-data are above a given threshold.

fig, ax = plt.subplots()
x = np.arange(0, 4 * np.pi, 0.01)
y = np.sin(x)
ax.plot(x, y, color='black')

threshold = 0.75
ax.axhline(threshold, color='green', lw=2, alpha=0.7)
ax.fill_between(x, 0, 1, where=y > threshold,
                color='green', alpha=0.5, transform=ax.get_xaxis_transform())

Summary

In this lab, you learned how to use fill_between function from Matplotlib to fill the area between two lines. You also learned how to selectively fill horizontal regions and mark horizontal regions across the whole axes.