Using Plotly Library for Interactive Data Visualization in Python
In my previous article, I explained how the Pandas library can be used for plotting basic and time series plots. While Pandas, Matplotlib, and Seaborn libraries are excellent data plotting libraries, they can only plot static graphs. Static plots are like simple non-interactive images. In most of the cases, static plots are enough to convey the information. However, in some cases you may like to add user interactivity to your plots.
In this article, we will see how the Python’s Plotly library can be used to plot interactive plots. We will plot geographical data using plotly and will explain how a user can interact with such plots.
Installing Required Libraries
To install the Plotly library using the “pip” utility, you need to execute the following command:
$ pip install plotly
In addition to Plotly, we will also use Cufflinks, which works as a connector between the Pandas library and Plotly, and helps us plot interactive graphs directly using a Pandas dataframe.
To install Cufflinks using pip, execute the following script:
$ pip install cufflinks