Plot mean and standard deviation

teaLeef picture teaLeef · Mar 18, 2014 · Viewed 164k times · Source

I have several values of a function at different x points. I want to plot the mean and std in python, like the answer of this SO question. I know this must be easy using matplotlib, but I have no idea of the function's name that can do that. Does anyone know it?

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Answer

Ffisegydd picture Ffisegydd · Mar 18, 2014

plt.errorbar can be used to plot x, y, error data (as opposed to the usual plt.plot)

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np

x = np.array([1, 2, 3, 4, 5])
y = np.power(x, 2) # Effectively y = x**2
e = np.array([1.5, 2.6, 3.7, 4.6, 5.5])

plt.errorbar(x, y, e, linestyle='None', marker='^')

plt.show()

plt.errorbar accepts the same arguments as plt.plot with additional yerr and xerr which default to None (i.e. if you leave them blank it will act as plt.plot).

Example plot