How can I place a table on a plot in Matplotlib?

matplotlib, python

Solution

AFAIK, you can't arbitrarily place a table on the `matplotlib` plot using only native `matplotlib` features. What you can do is take advantage of the possibility of `latex` text rendering. However, in order to do this you should have working `latex` environment in your system. If you have one, you should be able to produce graphs such as below:

import pylab as plt
import matplotlib as mpl

mpl.rc('text', usetex=True)
plt.figure()
ax=plt.gca()
y=[1,2,3,4,5,4,3,2,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1]
#plt.plot([10,10,14,14,10],[2,4,4,2,2],'r')
col_labels=['col1','col2','col3']
row_labels=['row1','row2','row3']
table_vals=[11,12,13,21,22,23,31,32,33]
table = r'''\begin{tabular}{ c | c | c | c } & col1 & col2 & col3 \\\hline row1 & 11 & 12 & 13 \\\hline row2 & 21 & 22 & 23 \\\hline  row3 & 31 & 32 & 33 \end{tabular}'''
plt.text(9,3.4,table,size=12)
plt.plot(y)
plt.show()

The result is:

Please take in mind that this is quick'n'dirty example; you should be able to place the table correctly by playing with text coordinates. Please also refer to the docs if you need to change fonts etc.

UPDATE: more on `pyplot.table`

According to the documentation, `plt.table` adds a table to current axes. From sources it's obvious, that table location on the graph is determined in relation to axes. `Y` coordinate can be controlled with keywords `top` (above graph), `upper` (in the upper half), `center` (in the center), `lower` (in the lower half) and `bottom` (below graph). `X` coordinate is controlled with keywords `left` and `right`. Any combination of the two works, e.g. any of `top left`, `center right` and `bottom` is OK to use.

So the closest graph to what you want could be made with:

import matplotlib.pylab as plt

plt.figure()
ax=plt.gca()
y=[1,2,3,4,5,4,3,2,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1]
#plt.plot([10,10,14,14,10],[2,4,4,2,2],'r')
col_labels=['col1','col2','col3']
row_labels=['row1','row2','row3']
table_vals=[[11,12,13],[21,22,23],[31,32,33]]
# the rectangle is where I want to place the table
the_table = plt.table(cellText=table_vals,
                  colWidths = [0.1]*3,
                  rowLabels=row_labels,
                  colLabels=col_labels,
                  loc='center right')
plt.text(12,3.4,'Table Title',size=8)

plt.plot(y)
plt.show()

And this gives you

Hope this helps!

Problem

Original source