👀 Views: 1852 💬 Answers: 1 📅 Created: 2025-07-02

matplotlib annotations data-visualization Python

I'm writing unit tests and I'm working through a tutorial and I'm trying to create a scatter plot using Matplotlib where I need to annotate specific data points based on a condition. However, my data points are irregularly spaced, and the annotations are overlapping or appearing outside the plot area. I have the following code that plots the data and tries to annotate points where the y-value exceeds a certain threshold: ```python import matplotlib.pyplot as plt import numpy as np # Sample data x = np.array([1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]) y = np.array([1, 3, 7, 2, 8, 5, 9]) plt.figure(figsize=(10, 5)) plt.scatter(x, y, color='blue') # Annotate points where y > 5 for i in range(len(y)): if y[i] > 5: plt.annotate(f'Point {i}', (x[i], y[i]), fontsize=10, ha='center') plt.title('Scatter Plot with Annotations') plt.xlabel('X-axis') plt.ylabel('Y-axis') plt.grid(True) plt.show() ``` The scenario I'm working with is that some annotations overlap, and others go out of the visible area. I've tried adjusting the `ha` (horizontal alignment) and using `xytext` to offset the annotations, but I'm still not getting satisfactory results. I would like some guidance on how to properly place annotations to avoid these overlaps and ensure they remain within the plot area, especially when the points are close together. Additionally, I'm using Matplotlib version 3.4.3 on Python 3.8. Any tips on best practices for annotating in such scenarios would be much appreciated! I've been using Python for about a year now. Is this even possible? I'm on Ubuntu 20.04 using the latest version of Python. Thanks for taking the time to read this! The stack includes Python and several other technologies. Am I missing something obvious?