Legends and Grids

Legends identify what different visual elements represent, while grids help viewers read values accurately. Both are essential for effective visualizations.

Basic Legends

Legend Placement

Legend Outside the Plot

Legend Customization

Horizontal Legend

Basic Grids

Major and Minor Grids

Axis-Specific Grids

Custom Tick Locations

Professional Grid Styling

Practice: Multi-Series Chart with Legend

Key Takeaways

• Use label parameter in plot commands, then call ax.legend()
• Position legends with loc or bbox_to_anchor for custom placement
• Customize legends with ncol, frameon, facecolor, title
• Basic grid: ax.grid(True), styled: ax.grid(True, alpha=0.3, linestyle='--')
• Use which='minor' for minor grid lines (requires minorticks_on())
• axis='x' or axis='y' for axis-specific grids
• Remove spines and use light grids for professional appearance
• Always consider whether a grid helps or clutters your visualization

In the next module, we'll introduce Seaborn for statistical visualization.