Time series with fill_between in Matplotlib - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Time Series Visualization with fill_between

📖 Scenario: You work as a data analyst for a weather station. You have daily temperature data for a week. You want to visualize the temperature changes and highlight the area between the minimum and maximum temperatures each day.

🎯 Goal: Create a time series plot of daily temperatures using matplotlib. Use fill_between to shade the area between the minimum and maximum temperatures for each day.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create lists for dates, minimum temperatures, and maximum temperatures.

Create a variable for the color to fill between the min and max temperatures.

Use plt.fill_between to shade the area between min and max temperatures.

Plot the min and max temperature lines on the same graph.

Display the plot with labels and a title.

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Visualizing temperature ranges helps meteorologists and planners understand daily weather variations and prepare accordingly.

💼 Career

Data analysts and scientists often use time series plots with shaded areas to show ranges, confidence intervals, or variability in data.

1

Create the temperature data lists

Create three lists called dates, min_temps, and max_temps with these exact values:
dates = ['Mon', 'Tue', 'Wed', 'Thu', 'Fri', 'Sat', 'Sun']
min_temps = [12, 14, 13, 15, 14, 16, 15]
max_temps = [20, 22, 21, 23, 22, 24, 23]

Matplotlib

# Create the lists for dates, min_temps, and max_temps
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use square brackets [] to create lists with the exact values given.

2

Set the fill color for the shaded area

Create a variable called fill_color and set it to the string 'lightblue' to use as the color for the area between min and max temperatures.

Matplotlib

dates = ['Mon', 'Tue', 'Wed', 'Thu', 'Fri', 'Sat', 'Sun']
min_temps = [12, 14, 13, 15, 14, 16, 15]
max_temps = [20, 22, 21, 23, 22, 24, 23]
# Create a variable called fill_color and set it to 'lightblue'
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Assign the string 'lightblue' to the variable fill_color.

3

Plot the temperature lines and fill the area between

Import matplotlib.pyplot as plt. Use plt.fill_between with dates, min_temps, and max_temps and the color set to fill_color. Then plot the min_temps and max_temps lines using plt.plot with dates as x-axis. Add labels for x-axis as 'Day' and y-axis as 'Temperature (°C)'. Add the title 'Daily Min and Max Temperatures'.

Matplotlib

dates = ['Mon', 'Tue', 'Wed', 'Thu', 'Fri', 'Sat', 'Sun']
min_temps = [12, 14, 13, 15, 14, 16, 15]
max_temps = [20, 22, 21, 23, 22, 24, 23]
fill_color = 'lightblue'
# Import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
# Use plt.fill_between with dates, min_temps, max_temps, and color=fill_color
# Plot min_temps and max_temps lines with plt.plot
# Add x-axis label 'Day', y-axis label 'Temperature (°C)', and title 'Daily Min and Max Temperatures'
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Remember to import matplotlib.pyplot as plt. Use plt.fill_between to shade between min and max temperatures. Then plot lines for min and max temperatures. Add labels and title for clarity.

4

Display the plot

Add a line to display the plot using plt.show().

Matplotlib

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

dates = ['Mon', 'Tue', 'Wed', 'Thu', 'Fri', 'Sat', 'Sun']
min_temps = [12, 14, 13, 15, 14, 16, 15]
max_temps = [20, 22, 21, 23, 22, 24, 23]
fill_color = 'lightblue'

plt.fill_between(dates, min_temps, max_temps, color=fill_color)
plt.plot(dates, min_temps, label='Min Temp', color='blue')
plt.plot(dates, max_temps, label='Max Temp', color='red')
plt.xlabel('Day')
plt.ylabel('Temperature (°C)')
plt.title('Daily Min and Max Temperatures')
plt.legend()
# Display the plot
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use plt.show() to display the plot window.