Plotting correlation matrix with Seaborn and pandas

Question

I try to plot the correlation matrix of a Pandas DataFrame. As the diagonal elements are always ones, and the matrix is symmetrical, so I can get rid of most than a half of the squares without loosing any useful information. I also moved the zero to the white color by default. Is there any other way to improve the function?

import seaborn as sns
import numpy as np
def plot_correlation_matrix(df, decimal=2, **kwargs):
 kwargs["cmap"] = kwargs.get("cmap", "vlag")
 kwargs["center"] = kwargs.get("center", 0) # 0 will be white if you use vlag cmap
 kwargs["fmt"] = kwargs.get("fmt", f".{decimal}f")
 corr = df.corr()
 corr_reduced = corr.iloc[1:,:-1] # No need for first row, last column
 mask = np.triu(np.ones_like(corr_reduced, dtype=bool), k=1) # No need for upper triangle
 sns.heatmap(corr_reduced, annot=True, mask=mask, **kwargs)
# Using the function
df_ir = sns.load_dataset("iris")
df_ir.petal_length = - df_ir.petal_length # creating negative correlation
plot_correlation_matrix(df_ir)

• noah1400: Improve the looks of the plot or improve looks/effiency of the code?

Answer 1

There are few things you can improve or add to your function:

1. You can add a title to the plot using the title parameter in the heatmap function. This will make it easier to interpret the plot.
2. Specify to range of values that the color map can have by using the vmin and vmax parameters in the heatmap function.
3. You can disable the color bar by using the cbar parameter in the heatmap function. If you are displaying a lot if matrices, you should save some space
4. using the square parameter to force the plot to be a square. If you have a big number of columns the plot would be very wide.
5. To improve the visual appeal you can use linecolor and linewidth to specify the color and width of the lines between the cells.
6. you can use the xticklabels and yticklabels parameters to disable the x and y-axis. Again if you have a big number of columns, you may want to save space.
7. You can also use annot_kws to use additional formatting options e.g. fontsize
8. Using the numpy function triu_indices to remove the need of the mask parameter in the heatmap function

import seaborn as sns
import numpy as np
def plot_correlation_matrix(df, decimal=2, **kwargs):
 kwargs["cmap"] = kwargs.get("cmap", "vlag")
 kwargs["center"] = kwargs.get("center", 0) # 0 will be white if you use vlag cmap
 kwargs["fmt"] = kwargs.get("fmt", f".{decimal}f")
 kwargs["vmin"] = kwargs.get("vmin", -1) # specify the minimum value for the color map
 kwargs["vmax"] = kwargs.get("vmax", 1) # specify the maximum value for the color map
 kwargs["cbar"] = kwargs.get("cbar", False) # specify whether or not to display a color bar
 kwargs["square"] = kwargs.get("square", True) # specify whether or not to force the plot to be a square
 kwargs["linecolor"] = kwargs.get("linecolor", "gray") # specify the color of the lines separating the cells
 kwargs["linewidth"] = kwargs.get("linewidth", 0.5) # specify the width of the lines separating the cells
 kwargs["xticklabels"] = kwargs.get("xticklabels", True) # specify whether or not to display x-axis labels
 kwargs["yticklabels"] = kwargs.get("yticklabels", True) # specify whether or not to display y-axis labels
 kwargs["annot_kws"] = kwargs.get("annot_kws", {"fontsize": 8}) # specify additional formatting options for the annotation text
 
 corr = df.corr()
 corr_reduced = corr.iloc[1:,:-1] # No need for first row, last column
 mask = np.triu_indices(corr_reduced.shape[0], k=1)
 corr_reduced[mask] = 0
 
 ax = sns.heatmap(corr_reduced, annot=True, **kwargs)
 ax.set_title("Correlation Matrix") # add a title to the plot
# Using the function
df_ir = sns.load_dataset("iris")
df_ir.petal_length = - df_ir.petal_length # creating negative correlation
plot_correlation_matrix(df_ir)