How to scatter plot with each dimension having its own color

Question

I want to get insight for some values. I have two vectors of 300 dimensions, and want to compare them coordinate by coordinate. So I thought to plot each point with a different color, but the color for a dimension to be the same so that I would know which coordinates are lying where.

I have the below code, which I modeled on some results at stackoverflow.

colors = itertools.cycle(["r", "g", "b"])

for d_in in inp_samples:
    clr = next(colors)
    plt.scatter(len(inp_samples), d_in, c=clr)

colors = itertools.cycle(["r", "g", "b"])

for d_out in out_samples:
    clr = next(colors)
    plt.scatter(len(out_samples), d_out, c=clr) 

But the plot I am getting is very weird. I was expecting it would be scattered but it is something like this:

I also tried this:

colors = cm.jet(np.linspace(0, 1, 300))

for d_in, d_out, c in zip(inp_samples, out_samples, colors):
    plt.scatter(len(inp_samples), d_in, c=c)
    plt.scatter(len(out_samples), d_out, c=c)

Can anyone help in understanding what I am doing wrong?

Answer 1

In scatter in Matplotlib, the first two arguments must be the $x$ and $y$ values that you want to combine. In your code, the first value ($x$) is len(inp_samples) (or len(out_samples)) which is the number 300, so all your points line on the $x=300$ vertical line.

In order to combine the inp_samples with the out_samples, I too would recommend using zip, as in your second sample of code. Just replace

plt.scatter(len(inp_samples), d_in, c=c)
plt.scatter(len(out_samples), d_out, c=c)

with

plt.scatter(d_in, d_out, c=c)

(and see if it works).

Edit

So I thought to plot each point with a different color, but the color for a dimension to be same, so that i would know, which dimensional points are lying where.

In a scatter plot, there is no need for any special colouring -- by two values forming one pair of $(x_i,y_i)$, it is already given which point belongs to which.

You could also try to plot $(i,x_i)$ and $(i,y_i)$ in the same plot. In this case, points above each other belong together and you still don't need any special colouring.

colors = itertools.cycle(["r", "g", "b"])
for i in range(300):
    clr = next(colors)
    plt.scatter(i, d_in[i], c=clr)
    plt.scatter(i, d_out[i], c=clr)