How to plot timedelta as value with matplotlib

Question

I am trying to plot a duration in seconds with respect to some iteration values. I compute the duration values by substracting two datetime values. Then, I would like to plot these results in a very simple way using existing tools.

My code is the following but it doesn't work yet:

#!/usr/bin/env python

import datetime
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from numpy import arange

it = arange(10)
durations = [datetime.timedelta(hours=h+30) for h in it]

plt.plot(it, durations)

plt.show()

I got the following error:

TypeError: float() argument must be a string or a number

I know that I can make it work by using datetime instead of timedelta but my goal is to plot duration in hours (around 40 hours) so the rendering is not good.

vy32 · Accepted Answer · 2018-08-11 11:04:02Z

7

That's because there is no defined conversion for timedelta to float. You can use:

durations = [datetime.timedelta(hours=h+30).total_seconds()/3600.0 for h in it]

to transform the duration to floating point hours. Look at how to format your tick labels if you want the nice hour notation on your plot. You can convert the hour (float) to a nicely formatted hour string.

(EDIT: changed .total_seconds to .total_seconds()

edited Aug 11, 2018 at 11:04

vy32

30.1k39 gold badges139 silver badges265 bronze badges

answered Nov 23, 2016 at 15:08

kabanus

26.3k7 gold badges48 silver badges79 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

1 Comment

Deditos Over a year ago

Shouldn't it be timedelta.total_seconds(), else you'll just end up with the duration modulo one day?

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

How to plot timedelta as value with matplotlib

1 Answer 1

1 Comment

Your Answer

Linked

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

1 Comment

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Linked

Related