A Better Default Colormap for Matplotlib (opens in new tab)

(bids.github.io)

114 pointsmartian10y ago23 comments

23 comments

22 comments · 15 top-level

Aardwolf10y ago· 3 in thread

Is it strange that I find the old "JET" the best? It uses the most hues (green, yellow, red and blue are all there), so things are the most distinguishable. The others are either only blue/green/yellow, or only purple/red/yellow.

lalaithion10y ago

Yes, that's the point. People like it a lot but are worse at actually interpreting it. It's confusing when people have to read lots of confusing data quickly

Scaevolus10y ago

Quick, which represents a larger value, green or red?

Having a gradient between two colors, from dark to light, makes it easier to determine the scale. Rainbow gradients look nice, but hue transitions are nowhere near as intuitive as luminance.

pdabbadabba10y ago

I think you're both correct, but your points respond to different needs. For some types of results (and audiences and modes of presentation) its more important that the reader be able to determine the approximate value that a color corresponds to than that the reader be able to quickly intuit the progression of values. For me, Jet is better at the former while Viridis et al are better at the latter.

stared10y ago· 2 in thread

When it comes to plot colors in matplotlib, it's why I start with

import seaborn as sns

to get a nice plot theme, not "good old 90s" style. See: https://speakerdeck.com/pmigdal/teaching-machine-learning?sl...

serialx10y ago

This, changes everything.

The theme seaborn uses is actually a direct clone from ggplot2 from R

stared10y ago

Yes. Though, I think that 'whitegrid' is a cleaner theme (if there were axes).

For ggplot theme, in matplotlib there is

plt.style.use('ggplot')

1 more reply

jules10y ago· 1 in thread

In the talk when he showed the 3 similar maps getting equal score, and then the green one getting a much higher score, that could easily be because people couldn't decide between the 3 similar maps, to they went with the one different map. To do a proper comparison the test should be 1-1 or 3-3, not 3-1.

xiphias10y ago

They wanted green because it's a python library. He goes into the details in the talk

slmouradian10y ago· 1 in thread

I dislike that the whole page, including the updates, do not contain any dates...

carreau10y ago

Good point. I'll ping authors to update page with dates.

jks10y ago

This will be the default in Matplotlib 2.0, and a beta was just tagged: http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.python.matplotlib.announ...

martianOP10y ago

OP here: really worth watching the embedded video on this topic. Viridis is born out of an awesome, intense deep-dive into research on human vision and perception.

franblas10y ago

I'm mostly using seaborn (https://web.stanford.edu/~mwaskom/software/seaborn/) to wrap matplotlib graphs but great to see a direct alternative into the matplotlib library.

xioxox10y ago

If you're interested in colour maps, cubehelix [1] is a useful scheme to make intensity maps which display well when converted to greyscale.

[1] https://www.mrao.cam.ac.uk/~dag/CUBEHELIX/

mbostock10y ago

I ported these color scales to d3-scale and D3 4.0:

https://github.com/d3/d3-scale/blob/master/README.md#sequent...

yoodenvranx10y ago

I started using viridis a few weeks ago and I love it!

tixzdk10y ago

Javascript version: https://github.com/politiken-journalism/scale-color-perceptu...

jxy10y ago

If you use gnuplot, which I do exclusively, you may like this repository:

    https://github.com/Gnuplotting/gnuplot-palettes

wnkrshm10y ago

I'm pleased. They look extremely similar to the gnuplot and gnuplot2 color maps already present in matplotlib, my favorites.

donquichotte10y ago

I also enjoy using Olga Botvinnik's prettyplotlib: github.com/olgabot/prettyplotlib

Bromskloss10y ago

That was an amusing talk. I had fun watching it.

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