python - Pandas and Matplotlib - fill_between() vs datetime64

Question

There is a Pandas DataFrame:

<class 'pandas.core.frame.DataFrame'>
Int64Index: 300 entries, 5220 to 5519
Data columns (total 3 columns):
Date             300 non-null datetime64[ns]
A                300 non-null float64
B                300 non-null float64
dtypes: datetime64[ns](1), float64(2)
memory usage: 30.5 KB

I want to plot A and B series vs Date.

plt.plot_date(data['Date'], data['A'], '-')
plt.plot_date(data['Date'], data['B'], '-')

Then I want apply fill_between() on area between A and B series:

plt.fill_between(data['Date'], data['A'], data['B'],
                where=data['A'] >= data['B'],
                facecolor='green', alpha=0.2, interpolate=True)

Which outputs:

TypeError: ufunc 'isfinite' not supported for the input types, and the inputs
could not be safely coerced to any supported types according to the casting 
rule ''safe''

Does matplotlib accept pandas datetime64 object in fill_between() function? Should I convert it to different date type?

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/29329725/pandas-and-matplotlib-fill-between-vs-datetime64

Answer 1

Pandas registers a converter in matplotlib.units.registry which converts a number of datetime types (such as pandas DatetimeIndex, and numpy arrays of dtype datetime64) to matplotlib datenums, but it does not handle Pandas Series with dtype datetime64.

In [67]: import pandas.tseries.converter as converter

In [68]: c = converter.DatetimeConverter()

In [69]: type(c.convert(df['Date'].values, None, None))
Out[69]: numpy.ndarray              # converted (good)

In [70]: type(c.convert(df['Date'], None, None))
Out[70]: pandas.core.series.Series  # left unchanged

fill_between checks for and uses a converter to handle the data if it exists.

So as a workaround, you could convert the dates to a NumPy array of datetime64's:

d = data['Date'].values
plt.fill_between(d, data['A'], data['B'],
                where=data['A'] >= data['B'],
                facecolor='green', alpha=0.2, interpolate=True)

---

For example,

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import pandas as pd

N = 300
dates = pd.date_range('2000-1-1', periods=N, freq='D')
x = np.linspace(0, 2*np.pi, N)
data = pd.DataFrame({'A': np.sin(x), 'B': np.cos(x),
               'Date': dates})
plt.plot_date(data['Date'], data['A'], '-')
plt.plot_date(data['Date'], data['B'], '-')

d = data['Date'].values
plt.fill_between(d, data['A'], data['B'],
                where=data['A'] >= data['B'],
                facecolor='green', alpha=0.2, interpolate=True)
plt.xticks(rotation=25)
plt.show()