change scatter plot marker thickness

Question

How can you change the thickness of marker lines in a scatter plot plt.scatter()? markeredgewidth is a valid attribute in plt.plot(); is there any equivalent attribute for scatter plots?

For example, when you change the size of a scatter plot (with marker = 'x'), the markers only get bigger, but the line thickness doesn't change.

I'm not trying to change the size but line thickness!

Possible duplicate of [pyplot scatter plot marker size](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14827650/pyplot-scatter-plot-marker-size) — AkiRoss, Apr 08 '16 at 11:35
No i'm not trying to change the size, but I need the thickness - please read the post — Curtis, Apr 08 '16 at 11:38
When you change the size of `marker = 'x'`, it only gets bigger, but I want this to be thicker as well. `markeredgewidth` does the same for `plt.plot()` — Curtis, Apr 08 '16 at 11:52

tmdavison · Accepted Answer · 2020-04-24T15:01:57.707

37

you are looking for the kwarg linewidths. e.g.:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
x = y = np.arange(5)

fig,ax = plt.subplots(1)

ax.scatter(x,y,  s=100,marker='x',color='b',linewidths=1)
ax.scatter(x,y+1,s=100,marker='x',color='r',linewidths=2)
ax.scatter(x,y+2,s=100,marker='x',color='g',linewidths=3)

plt.show()

Note: On some versions of matplotlib, it appears the kwarg is linewidth, not linewidths, despite what the manual currently says (April 2020). This is a known issue on the matplotlib github.

edited Apr 24 '20 at 15:01

answered Apr 08 '16 at 11:53

tmdavison

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Maybe something changed, but for me it was `linewidth`, not `linewidths`. No 's'. – wordsforthewise Jun 12 '18 at 02:28
In the installed docs for version 2.2.2 (currently latest stable version I think) in Python 3 it's saying `linewidths`. – wordsforthewise Jun 13 '18 at 22:18

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 24 '20 at 11:34

In Ubuntu-18.04 and installed matplotlib==3.2.0 with python-3.6.9, you just need to set linewidth attribute (Not linewidths):

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
x = y = np.arange(5)

fig,ax = plt.subplots(1)

ax.scatter(x,y,  s=100,marker='x',color='b',linewidth=1)
ax.scatter(x,y+1,s=100,marker='x',color='r',linewidth=2)
ax.scatter(x,y+2,s=100,marker='x',color='g',linewidth=6)

plt.show()

enter image description here

change scatter plot marker thickness

2 Answers2