How to plot non-numeric data in Matplotlib

Question

I wish to plot the time variation of my y-axis variable using Matplotlib. This is no problem for continuously discrete data, however how should this be tackled for non-continuous data.

I.e. if I wanted to visualise the times at which my car was stationary on the way to work the x-axis would be time and the y-axis would be comprised of the variables 'stationary' and 'moving' (pretty useless example i know)

The non-continuous data would need to be indexed somehow, but i don't know how to proceed...any ideas?

Answer 1

Is this the type of thing you want? (If not, you might want to check out the matplotlib gallery page to give yourself some ideas, or maybe just draw a picture and post it.)

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

data = [0]*5 + [1]*10 + [0]*3 +[1]*2

print data

fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(111)
ax.plot(data)
ax.set_yticks((0, 1.))
ax.set_yticklabels(('stopped', 'moving'))
ax.set_ybound((-.2, 1.2))
ax.set_xlabel("time (minutes)")

plt.show()