Hello all - many thanks again to people who have kindly offered help (especially to Mark for his outstanding response to my previous question).
I would like to plot implicit equations (of the form f(x,y)=g(x,y) eg. x^y=y^x) in Matplotlib. Is this possible?
All the best, Geddes
I don't believe there's very good support for this, but you could try something like
X,Y=meshgrid(xrange,yrange) F=X**Y G=Y**X contour(X,Y,(F-G),[0])
See the API docs for contour: if the fourth argument is a sequence then it specifies which contour lines to plot. But the plot will only be as good as the resolution of your ranges, and there are certain features it may never get right, often at self-intersection points.
matplotlib does not plot equations; it plots serieses of points. You can use a tool like scipy.optimize to numerically calculate y points from x values (or vice versa) of implicit equations numerically or any number of other tools as appropriate.
For example, here is an example where I plot the implicit equation x ** 2 + x * y + y ** 2 = 10 in a certain region.
from functools import partial
import numpy
import scipy.optimize
import matplotlib.pyplot as pp
def z(x, y):
return x ** 2 + x * y + y ** 2 - 10
x_window = 0, 5
y_window = 0, 5
xs = []
ys = []
for x in numpy.linspace(*x_window, num=200):
try:
# A more efficient technique would use the last-found-y-value as a
# starting point
y = scipy.optimize.brentq(partial(z, x), *y_window)
except ValueError:
# Should we not be able to find a solution in this window.
pass
else:
xs.append(x)
ys.append(y)
pp.plot(xs, ys)
pp.xlim(*x_window)
pp.ylim(*y_window)
pp.show()
If you're willing to use something other than matplotlib (but still python), there's sage:
An example: http://sagenb.org/home/pub/1806
Many thanks Steve, Mike, Alex. I have gone along with Steve's solution (please see code below). My only remaining issue is that the contour plot appears behind my gridlines, as opposed to a regular plot, which I can force to the front with zorder. Any more halp greatly appreciated.
Cheers, Geddes
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from matplotlib.ticker import MultipleLocator, FormatStrFormatter
import numpy as np
fig = plt.figure(1)
ax = fig.add_subplot(111)
# set up axis
ax.spines['left'].set_position('zero')
ax.spines['right'].set_color('none')
ax.spines['bottom'].set_position('zero')
ax.spines['top'].set_color('none')
ax.xaxis.set_ticks_position('bottom')
ax.yaxis.set_ticks_position('left')
# setup x and y ranges and precision
x = np.arange(-0.5,5.5,0.01)
y = np.arange(-0.5,5.5,0.01)
# draw a curve
line, = ax.plot(x, x**2,zorder=100)
# draw a contour
X,Y=np.meshgrid(x,y)
F=X**Y
G=Y**X
ax.contour(X,Y,(F-G),[0],zorder=100)
#set bounds
ax.set_xbound(-1,7)
ax.set_ybound(-1,7)
#produce gridlines of different colors/widths
ax.xaxis.set_minor_locator(MultipleLocator(0.2))
ax.yaxis.set_minor_locator(MultipleLocator(0.2))
ax.xaxis.grid(True,'minor',linestyle='-')
ax.yaxis.grid(True,'minor',linestyle='-')
minor_grid_lines = [tick.gridline for tick in ax.xaxis.get_minor_ticks()]
for idx,loc in enumerate(ax.xaxis.get_minorticklocs()):
if loc % 2.0 == 0:
minor_grid_lines[idx].set_color('0.3')
minor_grid_lines[idx].set_linewidth(2)
elif loc % 1.0 == 0:
minor_grid_lines[idx].set_c('0.5')
minor_grid_lines[idx].set_linewidth(1)
else:
minor_grid_lines[idx].set_c('0.7')
minor_grid_lines[idx].set_linewidth(1)
minor_grid_lines = [tick.gridline for tick in ax.yaxis.get_minor_ticks()]
for idx,loc in enumerate(ax.yaxis.get_minorticklocs()):
if loc % 2.0 == 0:
minor_grid_lines[idx].set_color('0.3')
minor_grid_lines[idx].set_linewidth(2)
elif loc % 1.0 == 0:
minor_grid_lines[idx].set_c('0.5')
minor_grid_lines[idx].set_linewidth(1)
else:
minor_grid_lines[idx].set_c('0.7')
minor_grid_lines[idx].set_linewidth(1)
plt.show()
Since you've tagged this question with sympy, I will give such an example.
From the documentation: http://docs.sympy.org/modules/plotting.html.
from sympy import var, Plot
var('x y')
Plot(x*y**3 - y*x**3)