.. _sphx_glr_gallery_ticks_and_spines_auto_ticks.py: ================================= Automatically setting tick labels ================================= Setting the behavior of tick auto-placement. If you don't explicitly set tick positions / labels, Matplotlib will attempt to choose them both automatically based on the displayed data and its limits. By default, this attempts to choose tick positions that are distributed along the axis: .. code-block:: python import matplotlib.pyplot as plt import numpy as np np.random.seed(19680801) fig, ax = plt.subplots() dots = np.arange(10) / 100. + .03 x, y = np.meshgrid(dots, dots) data = [x.ravel(), y.ravel()] ax.scatter(*data, c=data[1]) .. image:: /gallery/ticks_and_spines/images/sphx_glr_auto_ticks_001.png :align: center Sometimes choosing evenly-distributed ticks results in strange tick numbers. If you'd like Matplotlib to keep ticks located at round numbers, you can change this behavior with the following rcParams value: .. code-block:: python print(plt.rcParams['axes.autolimit_mode']) # Now change this value and see the results with plt.rc_context({'axes.autolimit_mode': 'round_numbers'}): fig, ax = plt.subplots() ax.scatter(*data, c=data[1]) .. image:: /gallery/ticks_and_spines/images/sphx_glr_auto_ticks_002.png :align: center .. rst-class:: sphx-glr-script-out Out:: data You can also alter the margins of the axes around the data by with ``axes.(x,y)margin``: .. code-block:: python with plt.rc_context({'axes.autolimit_mode': 'round_numbers', 'axes.xmargin': .8, 'axes.ymargin': .8}): fig, ax = plt.subplots() ax.scatter(*data, c=data[1]) plt.show() .. image:: /gallery/ticks_and_spines/images/sphx_glr_auto_ticks_003.png :align: center .. only :: html .. container:: sphx-glr-footer .. container:: sphx-glr-download :download:`Download Python source code: auto_ticks.py ` .. container:: sphx-glr-download :download:`Download Jupyter notebook: auto_ticks.ipynb ` .. only:: html .. rst-class:: sphx-glr-signature `Gallery generated by Sphinx-Gallery `_