You can use the following methods to plot a distribution of column values in a pandas DataFrame:

Method 1: Plot Distribution of Values in One Column

df['my_column'].plot(kind='kde')

Method 2: Plot Distribution of Values in One Column, Grouped by Another Column

df.groupby('group_column')['values_column'].plot(kind='kde')

The following examples show how to use each method in practice with the following pandas DataFrame:

import pandas as pd

#create DataFrame
df = pd.DataFrame({'team': ['A', 'A', 'A', 'A', 'A', 'A', 'A', 'A', 'A', 'A',
                            'B', 'B', 'B', 'B', 'B', 'B', 'B', 'B', 'B', 'B'],
                   'points': [3, 3, 4, 5, 4, 7, 7, 7, 10, 11, 
                              8, 7, 8, 9, 12, 12, 12, 14, 15, 17]})

#view DataFrame
print(df)

   team  points
0     A       3
1     A       3
2     A       4
3     A       5
4     A       4
5     A       7
6     A       7
7     A       7
8     A      10
9     A      11
10    B       8
11    B       7
12    B       8
13    B       9
14    B      12
15    B      12
16    B      12
17    B      14
18    B      15
19    B      17

Example 1: Plot Distribution of Values in One Column

The following code shows how to plot the distribution of values in the points column:

#plot distribution of values in points column
df['points'].plot(kind='kde')

Note that kind=’kde’ tells pandas to use kernel density estimation, which produces a smooth curve that summarizes the distribution of values for a variable.

If you’d like to create a histogram instead, you can specify kind=’hist’ as follows:

#plot distribution of values in points column using histogram
df['points'].plot(kind='hist', edgecolor='black')

This method uses bars to represent frequencies of values in the points column as opposed to a smooth line that summarizes the shape of the distribution.

Example 2: Plot Distribution of Values in One Column, Grouped by Another Column

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

#plot distribution of points by team 
df.groupby('team')['points'].plot(kind='kde')

#add legend
plt.legend(['A', 'B'], title='Team')

#add x-axis label
plt.xlabel('Points')

The blue line shows the distribution of points for players on team A while the orange line shows the distribution of points for players on team B.

The following tutorials explain how to perform other common tasks in pandas: