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boxplot treats iterables differently by type #2539
Description
It's stated in the documentation, but I find this behavior to be rather wart-y, and it led to some bugs in statsmodels. Why treat x array different from x sequence of lists?
For an array it iterates over the first axis
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
x = np.random.normal(size=(2,1000))
fig, ax = plt.subplots()
ax.boxplot(x.T)
for lists it iterates over the zero axis
fig, ax = plt.subplots()
ax.boxplot([x[0,:],x[1,:]])
Why the distinction? I'd expect them to be the same (i.e., the list gets an np.asarray call) and it seems inconsistent that they're not.
Activity
efiring commentedon Oct 27, 2013
From the general mpl and python standpoints, I agree entirely with @jseabold. It is unfortunate that this aspect of the signature is present; the question is what, if anything, to do about it now.
tacaswell commentedon Jan 22, 2014
@jseabold Have you seen PR #2643 to overhaul boxplot by @phobson?
tacaswell commentedon Aug 17, 2014
This might have to get punted to 2.0
anntzer commentedon Oct 19, 2017
I think most of the discussion is in #8092 now.