Violin plot with plt.violinplot in Matplotlib - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Create a Violin Plot with plt.violinplot

📖 Scenario: You are a data analyst working with a small dataset of exam scores from two classes. You want to visualize the distribution of scores to understand how students performed in each class.

🎯 Goal: Build a violin plot using plt.violinplot to compare the score distributions of two classes.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a list of scores for two classes

Set up a figure and axis using matplotlib

Use plt.violinplot to plot the score distributions

Label the x-axis with class names

Display the plot

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Violin plots help compare distributions of data, like exam scores or sales numbers, to see patterns and differences clearly.

💼 Career

Data analysts and scientists use violin plots to visualize data distributions and communicate insights effectively.

1

Create the exam scores data

Create two lists called class1_scores and class2_scores with these exact values: class1_scores = [55, 60, 65, 70, 75, 80, 85] and class2_scores = [50, 55, 60, 65, 70, 75, 80, 85, 90].

Matplotlib

# Create the exam scores lists for two classes
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use square brackets to create lists with the exact numbers given.

2

Set up the plot figure and axis

Import matplotlib.pyplot as plt. Then create a figure and axis using fig, ax = plt.subplots().

Matplotlib

class1_scores = [55, 60, 65, 70, 75, 80, 85]
class2_scores = [50, 55, 60, 65, 70, 75, 80, 85, 90]

# Import matplotlib.pyplot as plt and create figure and axis
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use import matplotlib.pyplot as plt and then plt.subplots() to create the plot area.

3

Create the violin plot with plt.violinplot

Use ax.violinplot to plot the two score lists together. Pass a list containing class1_scores and class2_scores as the data argument.

Matplotlib

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

class1_scores = [55, 60, 65, 70, 75, 80, 85]
class2_scores = [50, 55, 60, 65, 70, 75, 80, 85, 90]

fig, ax = plt.subplots()

# Use ax.violinplot with a list of the two score lists
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Pass a list containing both score lists to ax.violinplot.

4

Label the plot and display it

Set the x-axis tick labels to ["Class 1", "Class 2"] using ax.set_xticks([1, 2]) and ax.set_xticklabels(["Class 1", "Class 2"]). Then call plt.show() to display the plot.

Matplotlib

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

class1_scores = [55, 60, 65, 70, 75, 80, 85]
class2_scores = [50, 55, 60, 65, 70, 75, 80, 85, 90]

fig, ax = plt.subplots()

ax.violinplot([class1_scores, class2_scores])

# Set x-axis ticks and labels, then show the plot
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use ax.set_xticks and ax.set_xticklabels to label the classes. Then call plt.show() to see the plot.