Plot Larger Points On Bottom And Smaller On Top

I'm looking for a way to produce a scatter plot in python where smaller plots will be drawn above larger ones to improve the figure's 'readability' (is there a similar word for an

Solution 1:

Apply sort before plotting

order = np.argsort(-z1) # for descx = np.take(x, order)
y = np.take(y, order)
z1 = np.take(z1, order)
z2 = np.take(z2, order)

The figure using alpha is more readable.

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt


def random_data(N):
    # Generate some random data.
    return np.random.uniform(70., 250., N)

# Data lists.
N = 1000
x = random_data(N)
y = random_data(N)
z1 = random_data(N)
z2 = random_data(N)

order = np.argsort(-z1)
x = np.take(x, order)
y = np.take(y, order)
z1 = np.take(z1, order)
z2 = np.take(z2, order)

cm = plt.cm.get_cmap('RdYlBu')
plt.scatter(x, y, s=z1, c=z2, cmap=cm, alpha=0.7) # alpha can be 0 ~ 1
plt.colorbar()

plt.show()

The output is