How to plot two lists in descending order based on y values?

Question

I have two lists. The first is a list of strings a

[\'Agriculture/Forestry/Fisheries/Veterinary Medicine\',
 \'Architectural and Town Planning\',
 \         


        

Answer 1

A simple data rearrangement approach:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

a = [
    'Agriculture/Forestry/Fisheries/Veterinary Medicine',
    'Architectural and Town Planning',
    'Business Administration and Related'
]

b = [66667.0, 22283.0, 670091.5]

b, a = zip(*sorted(zip(b, a), reverse=True))  # reverse sort data on 'b'

c = range(len(b))

fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(111)
ax.bar(c, b)
plt.xticks(c, a, rotation=90)
plt.show()

Answer 2

Use numpy

• list(zip(list_name, list_count)) zips the two lists into a list of tuples
  • Convert the list of tuples into a np.array with dtypes
• np.sort sorts by ascending (smallest to largest)
• [::-1] reverses the array
• The benefits are, matplotlib easily accepts arrays, and the numpy column can be passed with its name.

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

text = ['Agriculture/Forestry/Fisheries/Veterinary Medicine', 'Architectural and Town Planning', 'Business Administration and Related']

values = [66667.0, 22283.0, 670091.5]

# get the length of the longest string in text, for the numpy str dtype
# this is only necessary if make sure the entire string is included in the array
str_len = max([len(t) for t in text])

# create numpy array with dtypes
t = np.array(list(zip(text, values)), dtype = [('text', f'S{str_len}'), ('values', int)])

# sort array
t = np.sort(t, order=['values'])[::-1]

# plot
plt.bar(x=t['text'], height=t['values'])
plt.xticks(rotation=90)

Answer 3

Is this what you are trying to do:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import pandas as pd
%matplotlib inline

categories = ['Agriculture/Forestry/Fisheries/Veterinary Medicine',
 'Architectural and Town Planning',
 'Business Administration and Related']

values = [66667.0,22283.0,670091.5]

df = pd.DataFrame(columns=['category', 'value'])
df = df.append([{"category":a, "value":b} for a, b in zip(categories, values)])

df.sort_values('value', ascending=False)[['category','value']].plot.bar()