减少 plot x 轴上的标签数量

Question

Im learning matplotlib, and trying to draw a simple scatter plot that has dates on the x-axis and values on the y. There are 2200 dates, from 2004 to 2019, (format 2014-09-17 type O).

Heres my code:

x=df.DATE
y=df.CLOSE

plt.figure(figsize=(21,12))
plt.xticks(fontsize=8, rotation = 45)
plt.scatter(x,y)

The plot is great, but, obviously, the xaxis has 2000 entries on it, Ive checked the Matplotlib documentation (maybe its me but its not very noob-friendly, unlike the python documentation) and other posts on stackoverflow, as to how to reduce the number of labels (dates) written on the x-axis: and have found various commands. Axes,set_xticklabels(labels, *, fontdict=None, minor=False, **kwargs)set_xticks(), MaxNLocator(), autolocator. Axes.set_xticks(MaxNLocator(10)) and others, Ive tried all sorts of variations. but none of them work. And many require "ax." which I havent used and when I try axes it tells me its not defined.

Im stumped. Any simple way I reduce the number of entries on the x-axis to, say a maximum of "n" dates or one date every 10?

Thanks!

Answer 1

You could use something like:

import matplotlib.dates as mdates


years = mdates.YearLocator()  
ax.xaxis.set_major_locator(years) #Every year

Here is a detailed example: https://matplotlib.org/2.0.2/examples/api/date_demo.html