Why animations show change over time in Matplotlib - See It in Action

Why animations show change over time

📖 Scenario: Imagine you want to show how the temperature changes during a day. Instead of showing just numbers, you want to create a simple animation that updates the temperature every hour. This helps people see the change clearly over time.

🎯 Goal: You will create a small program using matplotlib that animates a line graph showing temperature changes hour by hour.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a list of temperatures for 10 hours

Create a variable to track the current hour

Use a loop or function to update the graph for each hour

Display the animation showing temperature changes over time

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Animations help show how data changes over time, like weather patterns, stock prices, or sensor readings.

💼 Career

Data scientists use animations to communicate trends and changes clearly to others, making data easier to understand.

1

Create the temperature data

Create a list called temperatures with these exact values: [15, 16, 18, 21, 24, 23, 20, 18, 17, 16].

Matplotlib

# Create the list of temperatures
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use square brackets to create a list and separate numbers with commas.

2

Set up the current hour variable

Create a variable called current_hour and set it to 0 to start from the first hour.

Matplotlib

temperatures = [15, 16, 18, 21, 24, 23, 20, 18, 17, 16]
# Create the current_hour variable
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Just assign 0 to the variable current_hour.

3

Create the animation update function

Import matplotlib.pyplot as plt and FuncAnimation from matplotlib.animation. Then create a function called update that takes frame as input and plots temperatures from hour 0 up to frame. Use plt.cla() to clear the plot each time.

Matplotlib

temperatures = [15, 16, 18, 21, 24, 23, 20, 18, 17, 16]
current_hour = 0
# Import matplotlib and FuncAnimation
# Define the update(frame) function
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use plt.cla() to clear the plot before drawing new data.

Plot hours from 0 to frame and temperatures up to frame.

4

Run and display the animation

Create a FuncAnimation object called ani using plt.gcf(), the update function, and frames equal to the length of temperatures. Then use plt.show() to display the animation.

Matplotlib

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from matplotlib.animation import FuncAnimation

temperatures = [15, 16, 18, 21, 24, 23, 20, 18, 17, 16]
current_hour = 0

def update(frame):
    plt.cla()
    plt.plot(range(frame + 1), temperatures[:frame + 1], marker='o')
    plt.title('Temperature over time')
    plt.xlabel('Hour')
    plt.ylabel('Temperature (°C)')
    plt.ylim(10, 30)

# Create the animation and show it
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use FuncAnimation with plt.gcf(), update, and frames=len(temperatures). Use plt.show() to display.