Table of Contents
To reverse the axes in matplotlib, you can use the “invert_xaxis()” and “invert_yaxis()” methods on the axes object. This will cause the order of the data points to be reversed when the chart is rendered. You can also use the “plt.gca().invert_xaxis()” and “plt.gca().invert_yaxis()” methods, which will reverse the axes on the current axes object.
You can use the following basic syntax to reverse the x-axis and y-axis in Matplotlib:
plt.gca().invert_xaxis() plt.gca().invert_yaxis()
The following example shows how to use this syntax in practice.
Example: Reverse Axes in Matplotlib
The following code shows how to create a basic scatterplot in Matplotlib:
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
#define x and y
x = [1, 4, 8, 11, 13, 14]
y = [5, 11, 18, 26, 25, 23]
#create scatterplot of x and y
plt.scatter(x, y)
We can use the following code to reverse the y-axis:
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
#define x and y
x = [1, 4, 8, 11, 13, 14]
y = [5, 11, 18, 26, 25, 23]
#create scatterplot of x and y
plt.scatter(x, y)
#reverse y-axis
plt.gca().invert_yaxis()
Notice that the y-axis now ranges from 25 to 5 instead of 5 to 25.
Alternatively, we could use the following code to reverse the x-axis:
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
#define x and y
x = [1, 4, 8, 11, 13, 14]
y = [5, 11, 18, 26, 25, 23]
#create scatterplot of x and y
plt.scatter(x, y)
#reverse x-axis
plt.gca().invert_xaxis()
Notice that the x-axis now ranges from 14 to 0 instead of 0 to 14.
Lastly, we could use the following code to reverse both axes:
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
#define x and y
x = [1, 4, 8, 11, 13, 14]
y = [5, 11, 18, 26, 25, 23]
#create scatterplot of x and y
plt.scatter(x, y)
#reverse both axes
plt.gca().invert_xaxis()
plt.gca().invert_yaxis()
Notice that both axes values are reversed.
The following tutorials explain how to perform other common operations in Matplotlib: