Matplotlib log scale tick label number formatting

Question

With matplotlib when a log scale is specified for an axis, the default method of labeling that axis is with numbers that are 10 to a power eg. 10^6. Is there an easy way to change all of these labels to be their full numerical representation? eg. 1, 10, 100, etc.

Note that I do not know what the range of powers will be and want to support an arbitrary range (negatives included).

Answer 1

Sure, just change the formatter.

For example, if we have this plot:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

fig, ax = plt.subplots()
ax.axis([1, 10000, 1, 100000])
ax.loglog()

plt.show()

You could set the tick labels manually, but then the tick locations and labels would be fixed when you zoom/pan/etc. Therefore, it's best to change the formatter. By default, a logarithmic scale uses a LogFormatter, which will format the values in scientific notation. To change the formatter to the default for linear axes (ScalarFormatter) use e.g.

from matplotlib.ticker import ScalarFormatter
for axis in [ax.xaxis, ax.yaxis]:
    axis.set_major_formatter(ScalarFormatter())