In Matplotlib what does the argument mean in fig add subplot 111

Question

Sometimes I come across code such as this   import matplotlib pyplot as plt x    1  2  3  4  5  y    1  4  9  16  25  fig   plt figure   fig add subplot 111  plt scatter x  y  plt show     Which produces     I ve been reading the documentation like crazy but I can t find an explanation for the 111  sometimes I see a 212   What does the argument of fig add subplot   mean

User · Answer

The add subplot   method has several call signatures    add subplot nrows  ncols  index    kwargs  add subplot pos    kwargs  add subplot ax  add subplot    lt -- since 3 1 0     Calls 1 and 2   Calls 1 and 2 achieve the same thing as one another  up to a limit  explained below   Think of them as first specifying the grid layout with their first 2 numbers  2x2  1x8  3x4  etc   e g   f add subplot 3 4 1     is equivalent to  f add subplot 341    Both produce a subplot arrangement of  3 x 4   12  subplots in 3 rows and 4 columns  The third number in each call indicates which axis object to return  starting from 1 at the top left  increasing to the right   This code illustrates the limitations of using call 2      usr bin env python3 import matplotlib pyplot as plt  def plot and text axis  text        Simple function to add a straight line   and text to an axis object      axis plot  0 1   0 1     axis text 0 02  0 9  text   f   plt figure   f2   plt figure     max   12 for i in range  max     axis   f add subplot 3 4 i 1  fc  0 0 0 i   max 2    xticks     yticks       plot and text axis chr i 97            3 4    str i 1        If this check isn t in place  a      ValueError  num must be 1  lt   num  lt   15  not 0 is raised   if i  lt  9      axis   f2 add subplot 341 i  fc  0 0 0 i   max 2    xticks     yticks         plot and text axis chr i 97           str 341 i    f tight layout   f2 tight layout   plt show       You can see with call 1 on the LHS you can return any axis object  however with call 2 on the RHS you can only return up to index   9 rendering subplots j   k   and l  inaccessible using this call   I e it illustrates this point from the documentation      pos is a three digit integer  where the first digit is the number of rows  the second the number of columns  and the third the index of the subplot  i e  fig add subplot 235  is the same as fig add subplot 2  3  5   Note that all integers must be less than 10 for this form to work      Call 3     In rare circumstances  add subplot may be called with a single argument  a subplot axes instance already created in the present figure but not in the figure s list of axes      Call 4  since 3 1 0       If no positional arguments are passed  defaults to  1  1  1     i e   reproducing the call fig add subplot 111  in the question

User · Answer

The answer from Constantin is spot on but for more background this behavior is inherited from Matlab    The Matlab behavior is explained in the Figure Setup - Displaying Multiple Plots per Figure section of the Matlab documentation      subplot m n i  breaks the figure window into an m-by-n matrix of small   subplots and selects the ithe subplot for the current plot  The plots   are numbered along the top row of the figure window  then the second   row  and so forth

User · Answer

My solution is  fig   plt figure   fig add subplot 1  2  1     top and bottom left fig add subplot 2  2  2     top right fig add subplot 2  2  4     bottom right  plt show

User · Answer

import matplotlib pyplot as plt plt figure figsize  8 8   plt subplot 3 2 1  plt subplot 3 2 3  plt subplot 3 2 5  plt subplot 2 2 2  plt subplot 2 2 4    The first code creates the first subplot in a layout that has 3 rows and 2 columns   The three graphs in the first column denote the 3 rows  The second plot comes just below the first plot in the same column and so on   The last two plots have arguments  2  2  denoting that the second column has only two rows  the position parameters move row wise

User · Answer

fig add subplot ROW COLUMN POSITION    ROW number of rows COLUMN number of columns POSITION  position of the graph you are plotting    Examples   fig add subplot 111    There is only one subplot or graph    fig add subplot 211     and    fig add subplot 212      There are total 2 rows 1 column therefore 2 subgraphs can be plotted  Its location is 1st  There are total 2 rows 1 column therefore 2 subgraphs can be plotted Its location is 2nd

User · Answer

I think this would be best explained by the following picture     To initialize the above  one would type   import matplotlib pyplot as plt fig   plt figure   fig add subplot 221     top left fig add subplot 222     top right fig add subplot 223     bottom left fig add subplot 224     bottom right  plt show

User · Answer

These are subplot grid parameters encoded as a single integer  For example   111  means  1x1 grid  first subplot  and  234  means  2x3 grid  4th subplot    Alternative form for add subplot 111  is add subplot 1  1  1

[python] In Matplotlib, what does the argument mean in fig.add_subplot(111)?

Calls 1 and 2:

Call 3

Call 4 (since 3.1.0):

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