This plot is supposed to show differences in time, which can be both negative and positive values. Some differences are very small, while others are very large.
Can I scale the x-axis so that the resolution is very fine near x = 0 and coarse farther away from x = 0? Is it possible to have a logarithmic scale going outward from x = 0?
EDIT:
As suggested by @Evert, this solves the problem for me:
ax = gca()
...
ax.set_xscale("symlog")
and produces this plot:
You can use the symlog setting in xscale(): http://matplotlib.org/api/pyplot_api.html#matplotlib.pyplot.xscale
It scales logarithmically (also on the negative side), apart from a limited section around zero (which can be set using further keywords, see the documentation): that section is scaled linearly, thus avoiding all log(0) problems.
See here for an example.
I would make two subplots: plot the positive times in the right-hand subplot, and plot abs(negative times) in the left-hand subplot, with a reversed x-axis.
Is it possible to have a logarithmic scale going outward from x = 0?
No, because a logarithmic plot doesn't show zero --- as you approach the "left end" of the log-x axis, you go to negative infinity in log space, so you can't cross zero to get to the truly negative values. You have to cut zero out somehow.
