Change colours of Pandas bar chart

Question

I want the bars in a Pandas chart to each be given a different colour. The solution looks pretty simple according to this post and ones like it.

When I try to emulat

Answer 1

Let's use this code instead:

df.plot(kind='bar',    # Plot a bar chart
        legend=False,    # Turn the Legend off
        width=0.75,      # Set bar width as 75% of space available
        figsize=(8,5.8),  # Set size of plot in inches
        color=[plt.cm.Paired(np.arange(len(df)))])

Answer 2

This should also work:*

df['Degree'].plot.bar()

This is different because df['Degree'] is a series.

Pandas Series seem to be plotted with each bar a different colour (presumably as each is assumed to be from a different category or label) whereas in a dataframe each series is assumed to be a set of values from one category so they are given the same colour.

For example:

s = pd.Series({'a': 100, 'b': 74, 'c': 50})
s.plot.bar()

Produces:

UPDATE:

* Apparently for pandas versions < 0.17.0 you must use s.plot(kind='bar') not s.plot.bar(). I suspect the colour behaviour I am showing here is also version-specific. This demo was done with version 0.22.0.