Matplotlib Has Numerous Hidden Gems. Here's One of Them.

A cool trick to improve Matplotlib plots.

One of the best yet underrated and underutilized potentials of matplotlib is customizability. Here's a pretty interesting thing you can do with it.

By default, matplotlib renders different types of elements (also called artists), like plots, legend, texts, etc., in a specific order.

But this ordering may not be desirable in all cases, especially when there are overlapping elements in a plot, or the default rendering is hiding some crucial details.

With the zorder parameter, you can control this rendering order. As a result, plots with higher zorder value appear closer to the viewer and are drawn on top of artists with lower zorder values.

Lastly, in the above demonstration, if we specify zorder=0 for the line plot, we notice that it goes behind the grid lines.

You can find more details about zorder here: Matplotlib docs.

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Find the code for my tips here: GitHub.

I like to explore, experiment and write about data science concepts and tools. You can read my articles on Medium. Also, you can connect with me on LinkedIn and Twitter.