change scientific notation abbreviation of y axis units to a string

Question

First I would like to apologize as I know I am not asking this question correctly (which is why I cant find what is likely a simple answer).

I have a graph

As you can see above the y axis it says 1e11 meaning that the units are in 100 Billions. I would like to change the graph to read 100 Billion instead of 1e11.

I am not sure what such a notation is called.

To be clear I am not asking to change the whole y axis to number values like other questions I only want to change the top 1e11 to be more readable to those who are less mathematical.

ax.get_yaxis().get_major_formatter().set_scientific(False)

results in an undesired result

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/14711655/how-to-prevent-numbers-being-changed-to-exponential-form-in-python-matplotlib-fi May be this can help. Or this : https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11855363/how-to-remove-relative-shift-in-matplotlib-axis/11858063#11858063 — harvpan, May 14 '18 at 17:18
Those solutions are related but different to what i am looking for — Kevin Riordan, May 14 '18 at 17:26
@Scott Boston My question is different please unmark as duplicate — Kevin Riordan, May 14 '18 at 17:31
Possible duplicate: https://stackoverflow.com/q/31517156/588071 — tmdavison, May 14 '18 at 22:51

score 4 · Answer 1 · answered May 14 '18 at 18:01

4

import numpy as np
from matplotlib.ticker import FuncFormatter

def billions(x, pos):
    return '$%1.1fB' % (x*1e-9)

formatter = FuncFormatter(billions)

ax.yaxis.set_major_formatter(formatter)

located from https://matplotlib.org/examples/pylab_examples/custom_ticker1.html

produces

answered May 14 '18 at 18:01

Kevin Riordan

149
1
8

You beat me to it. :) +1 – Scott Boston May 14 '18 at 18:02
Did not know matplotlib had it. +1. – harvpan May 14 '18 at 18:05

change scientific notation abbreviation of y axis units to a string

1 Answers1