Determine series order in matplotlib chart

Question

I am banging my head against matplotlib bar chart. How do I change the order of bars here, such that women are shown before men?

#!/usr/bin/env python
# a bar plot with errorbars
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

N = 5
menMeans = (20, 35, 30, 35, 27)
menStd = (2, 3, 4, 1, 2)

ind = np.arange(N)  # the x locations for the groups
width = 0.35       # the width of the bars

fig, ax = plt.subplots()
rects1 = ax.bar(ind, menMeans, width, color='r', yerr=menStd)

womenMeans = (25, 32, 34, 20, 25)
womenStd = (3, 5, 2, 3, 3)
rects2 = ax.bar(ind + width, womenMeans, width, color='y', yerr=womenStd)

# add some text for labels, title and axes ticks
ax.set_ylabel('Scores')
ax.set_title('Scores by group and gender')
ax.set_xticks(ind + width)
ax.set_xticklabels(('G1', 'G2', 'G3', 'G4', 'G5'))

ax.legend((rects1[0], rects2[0]), ('Men', 'Women'))


def autolabel(rects):
    # attach some text labels
    for rect in rects:
        height = rect.get_height()
        ax.text(rect.get_x() + rect.get_width()/2., 1.05*height,
                '%d' % int(height),
                ha='center', va='bottom')

autolabel(rects1)
autolabel(rects2)

plt.show()

It seems to me that matplotlib insists on sorting the data alphabetically. Is there a way to avoid this?

Answer 1

The solution is quite easy, the order is the xlocation:

 rects2 = ax.bar(ind - width, womenMeans, width, color='y', yerr=womenStd)

This will plot the bars for the second series before the first one.