Edit tick labels in logarithmic axis

Question

I'm trying to edit the tick labels but I keep getting scientific notation, even after setting the ticks. Here is a MWE:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(9, 7))
fig.subplots_adjust(left=0.11, right=0.95, top=0.94)

ax.ticklabel_format(style='plain')

plt.plot([1,4],[3,6] )

ax.set_yscale('log')
ax.set_xscale('log')

ax.set_xticks([0.7,1,1.5,2,2.5,3,4,5])

ax.get_xaxis().set_major_formatter(matplotlib.ticker.ScalarFormatter())

which produces this plot

As you can see ax.ticklabel_format(style='plain') doesn't seem to work as I keep getting tick labels in scientific notation, and when using ax.set_xticks the old tick labels are still present. I took a look at this topic and it seems like the problem is in the choose of the ticks, if I use for example 0.3 instead of 0.7 as the first tick it works, however I need to do a plot in this specific range and using log scale.

Any work around?

Answer 1

Actually, your code is doing what you need, the problem is the labels from the minor ticks that remain unaffected and overlap with the major ticks

you can simply add the line:

ax.get_xaxis().set_minor_formatter(matplotlib.ticker.NullFormatter())

full code:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(9, 7))
fig.subplots_adjust(left=0.11, right=0.95, top=0.94)

ax.ticklabel_format(style='plain')

plt.plot([1,4],[3,6] )

ax.set_yscale('log')
ax.set_xscale('log')

ax.set_xticks([0.7,1,1.5,2,2.5,3,4,5])
ax.get_xaxis().set_major_formatter(matplotlib.ticker.ScalarFormatter())
ax.get_xaxis().set_minor_formatter(matplotlib.ticker.NullFormatter())