Named colors and hex codes in Matplotlib - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Named colors and hex codes

📖 Scenario: You are creating a simple color chart to understand how named colors and hex codes work in plotting. This helps when you want to make your charts look nice and clear.

🎯 Goal: Build a small program that stores some named colors and their hex codes, then uses matplotlib to show these colors in a bar chart.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a dictionary with color names as keys and their hex codes as values

Create a list of color names to use in the chart

Use matplotlib to plot a bar chart with bars colored by their hex codes

Print the dictionary of colors and hex codes

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Knowing how to use named colors and hex codes helps you make charts and graphs that are easy to understand and visually appealing.

💼 Career

Data scientists and analysts often customize chart colors to match branding or to highlight important data points clearly.

1

Create a dictionary of colors and hex codes

Create a dictionary called colors with these exact entries: 'red': '#FF0000', 'green': '#00FF00', 'blue': '#0000FF', 'yellow': '#FFFF00', and 'purple': '#800080'.

Matplotlib

# Create the dictionary called colors with the given color names and hex codes
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use curly braces {} to create the dictionary. Each entry is a key-value pair separated by a colon.

2

Create a list of color names to plot

Create a list called color_names containing these exact strings in this order: 'red', 'green', 'blue', 'yellow', 'purple'.

Matplotlib

colors = {
    'red': '#FF0000',
    'green': '#00FF00',
    'blue': '#0000FF',
    'yellow': '#FFFF00',
    'purple': '#800080'
}
# Create the list called color_names with the given color names
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use square brackets [] to create the list with the color names as strings.

3

Plot a bar chart with colors using hex codes

Import matplotlib.pyplot as plt. Then create a bar chart with bars for each color in color_names. Use the hex codes from colors to set the bar colors. Use range(len(color_names)) for x positions and [1]*len(color_names) for bar heights. Set the bar colors with the color parameter using a list comprehension that gets hex codes from colors.

Matplotlib

colors = {
    'red': '#FF0000',
    'green': '#00FF00',
    'blue': '#0000FF',
    'yellow': '#FFFF00',
    'purple': '#800080'
}

color_names = ['red', 'green', 'blue', 'yellow', 'purple']

# Import matplotlib.pyplot as plt and create the bar chart with colored bars
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use plt.bar() with x positions as range(len(color_names)) and heights as a list of 1s. Use a list comprehension to get hex codes for colors.

4

Print the colors dictionary and show the plot

Print the colors dictionary. Then call plt.show() to display the bar chart.

Matplotlib

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

colors = {
    'red': '#FF0000',
    'green': '#00FF00',
    'blue': '#0000FF',
    'yellow': '#FFFF00',
    'purple': '#800080'
}

color_names = ['red', 'green', 'blue', 'yellow', 'purple']

plt.bar(range(len(color_names)), [1]*len(color_names), color=[colors[name] for name in color_names])

# Print the colors dictionary and show the plot
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use print(colors) to show the dictionary. Use plt.show() to display the chart.