Unequal subplot sizes in Matplotlib - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Unequal subplot sizes

📖 Scenario: You are creating a simple data visualization for a report. You want to show two charts side by side, but one chart should be bigger than the other to highlight its importance.

🎯 Goal: Build a matplotlib figure with two subplots arranged horizontally. The left subplot should be twice as wide as the right subplot.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a matplotlib figure with two subplots arranged in one row

Use gridspec_kw to set the width ratios of the subplots to 2 and 1

Plot simple line charts on each subplot

Display the figure with plt.show()

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

In reports or presentations, some charts need more space to show details clearly. Unequal subplot sizes help highlight important data visually.

💼 Career

Data analysts and scientists often customize plots to communicate insights effectively. Knowing how to adjust subplot sizes is a useful skill.

1

Create sample data

Create two lists called x and y1 with values [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] and [1, 4, 9, 16, 25] respectively.

Matplotlib

# Create lists x and y1 with the given values
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use square brackets to create lists. For example, x = [1, 2, 3].

2

Add second data list

Create a list called y2 with values [25, 16, 9, 4, 1].

Matplotlib

x = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
y1 = [1, 4, 9, 16, 25]
# Create list y2 with the given values
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Remember to use square brackets and commas to separate values.

3

Create figure with unequal subplot sizes

Import matplotlib.pyplot as plt. Create a figure and two subplots in one row using plt.subplots() with nrows=1, ncols=2, and gridspec_kw={'width_ratios': [2, 1]}. Plot x vs y1 on the first subplot and x vs y2 on the second subplot.

Matplotlib

x = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
y1 = [1, 4, 9, 16, 25]
y2 = [25, 16, 9, 4, 1]
# Import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
# Create figure and subplots with width ratios 2 and 1
# Plot x vs y1 on first subplot
# Plot x vs y2 on second subplot
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use plt.subplots() with gridspec_kw to set different widths for subplots.

4

Display the figure

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

Matplotlib

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

x = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
y1 = [1, 4, 9, 16, 25]
y2 = [25, 16, 9, 4, 1]

fig, (ax1, ax2) = plt.subplots(nrows=1, ncols=2, gridspec_kw={'width_ratios': [2, 1]})
ax1.plot(x, y1)
ax2.plot(x, y2)
# Display the figure
# Your code here

Need a hint?

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