Saving figures to files in Matplotlib - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Saving figures to files

📖 Scenario: You are working on a small data science project where you create simple charts to understand sales data. You want to save these charts as image files so you can share them with your team.

🎯 Goal: Create a bar chart from sales data and save the figure as a PNG file on your computer.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a dictionary with sales data for three products

Set a filename variable for the image file

Use matplotlib to create a bar chart from the sales data

Save the figure to the file using the filename variable

Print a confirmation message with the filename

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Saving charts as image files is common when sharing data insights with others or including visuals in reports.

💼 Career

Data scientists and analysts often save figures to files to document their findings and communicate results clearly.

1

Create sales data dictionary

Create a dictionary called sales with these exact entries: 'Apples': 30, 'Bananas': 45, 'Cherries': 25.

Matplotlib

# Create the sales dictionary with exact entries
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use curly braces to create a dictionary with keys and values separated by colons.

2

Set filename for saving figure

Create a variable called filename and set it to the string 'sales_chart.png'.

Matplotlib

sales = {'Apples': 30, 'Bananas': 45, 'Cherries': 25}
# Create a filename variable with the value 'sales_chart.png'
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a string variable to store the filename for the image.

3

Create bar chart with matplotlib

Import matplotlib.pyplot as plt. Use plt.bar() with sales.keys() and sales.values() to create a bar chart. Then use plt.savefig(filename) to save the figure to the file.

Matplotlib

sales = {'Apples': 30, 'Bananas': 45, 'Cherries': 25}
filename = 'sales_chart.png'
# Import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
# Create a bar chart using sales keys and values
# Save the figure to the filename
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use plt.bar() to create the bar chart and plt.savefig() to save it.

4

Print confirmation message

Write a print statement that outputs: "Figure saved as sales_chart.png" using the filename variable inside an f-string.

Matplotlib

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

sales = {'Apples': 30, 'Bananas': 45, 'Cherries': 25}
filename = 'sales_chart.png'

plt.bar(sales.keys(), sales.values())
plt.savefig(filename)
# Print confirmation message with filename
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use print(f"Figure saved as {filename}") to show the message.