How to make a 3D scatter plot in Python?

python 3d matplotlib plot scatter-plot
user211037 picture user211037 · Dec 31, 2009 · Viewed 161.1k times · Source

I am currently have a nx3 matrix array. I want plot the three columns as three axis's. How can I do that?

I have googled and people suggested using Matlab, but I am really having a hard time with understanding it. I also need it be a scatter plot.

Can someone teach me?

Answer

Chinmay Kanchi picture Chinmay Kanchi · Dec 31, 2009

You can use matplotlib for this. matplotlib has a mplot3d module that will do exactly what you want.

from matplotlib import pyplot
from mpl_toolkits.mplot3d import Axes3D
import random


fig = pyplot.figure()
ax = Axes3D(fig)

sequence_containing_x_vals = list(range(0, 100))
sequence_containing_y_vals = list(range(0, 100))
sequence_containing_z_vals = list(range(0, 100))

random.shuffle(sequence_containing_x_vals)
random.shuffle(sequence_containing_y_vals)
random.shuffle(sequence_containing_z_vals)

ax.scatter(sequence_containing_x_vals, sequence_containing_y_vals, sequence_containing_z_vals)
pyplot.show()

The code above generates a figure like:

matplotlib 3D image

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