Mplcursors for hover labels in Matplotlib - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Interactive Hover Labels with Mplcursors in Matplotlib

📖 Scenario: You are analyzing sales data for a small store. You want to create a simple scatter plot of sales over days and add interactive hover labels to see exact values when you move the mouse over points.

🎯 Goal: Create a scatter plot using matplotlib and add interactive hover labels using mplcursors to display the exact sales value when hovering over each point.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a dictionary called sales_data with days as keys and sales as values

Create a list called days containing the keys from sales_data

Create a list called sales containing the values from sales_data

Plot a scatter plot of days vs sales using matplotlib.pyplot.scatter

Use mplcursors.cursor to add hover labels showing sales values

Print the plot with interactive hover labels

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Interactive plots help analysts explore data visually and get exact values easily without cluttering the graph.

💼 Career

Data scientists and analysts often use interactive visualizations to communicate insights clearly and allow users to explore data points.

1

Create the sales data dictionary

Create a dictionary called sales_data with these exact entries: 1: 150, 2: 200, 3: 170, 4: 220, 5: 180

Matplotlib

# Create the sales_data dictionary with days and sales
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use curly braces {} to create a dictionary with keys as days and values as sales.

2

Extract days and sales lists

Create a list called days containing the keys from sales_data and a list called sales containing the values from sales_data

Matplotlib

sales_data = {1: 150, 2: 200, 3: 170, 4: 220, 5: 180}
# Create days list from sales_data keys
# Create sales list from sales_data values
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use list() with sales_data.keys() and sales_data.values() to get the lists.

3

Plot scatter and add mplcursors hover labels

Import matplotlib.pyplot as plt and mplcursors. Plot a scatter plot of days vs sales using plt.scatter(days, sales). Then use mplcursors.cursor() on the scatter plot to add hover labels showing sales values.

Matplotlib

sales_data = {1: 150, 2: 200, 3: 170, 4: 220, 5: 180}
days = list(sales_data.keys())
sales = list(sales_data.values())

# Import matplotlib.pyplot as plt and mplcursors
# Plot scatter of days vs sales
# Add mplcursors cursor for hover labels
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use plt.scatter() to plot points and mplcursors.cursor() with hover=True to enable hover labels.

4

Display the plot with hover labels

Add plt.show() to display the scatter plot with interactive hover labels.

Matplotlib

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import mplcursors

sales_data = {1: 150, 2: 200, 3: 170, 4: 220, 5: 180}
days = list(sales_data.keys())
sales = list(sales_data.values())

scatter = plt.scatter(days, sales)
mplcursors.cursor(scatter, hover=True)

# Display the plot
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use plt.show() to open the plot window with interactive hover labels.