How to set Specific Marker for Scatter Plot in Matplotlib?

Matplotlib Scatter Plot – Marker Shape

To set specific marker for drawing points on Scatter Plot in Matplotlib, pass required marker string to marker parameter of scatter() function.

The following table lists some of the most used markers in Scatter Plot.

marker value	Description
"."	point
","	pixel
"o"	circle
"v"	triangle_down
"^"	triangle_up
"<"	triangle_left
">"	triangle_right
"1"	tri_down
"2"	tri_up
"3"	tri_left
"4"	tri_right
"8"	octagon
"s"	square
"p"	pentagon

The following is definition of scatter() function with marker parameter, at fight position, whose default value is None.

matplotlib.pyplot.scatter(x, y, s=None, c=None, marker=None, cmap=None, norm=None, vmin=None, vmax=None, alpha=None, linewidths=None, *, edgecolors=None, plotnonfinite=False, data=None, **kwargs)

Example

In the following example, we will draw a scatter plot with 6 (six) data points, and set triangle_up as marker.

example.py

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

#data
x = [0, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3]
y = [0, 1, 2, 1, 2, 3]

#marker - triangle up
m = "^"

#scatter plot
plt.scatter(x, y, marker = m)

plt.show()

Output

Let us try out another marker, say ‘square’.

example.py

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

#data
x = [0, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3]
y = [0, 1, 2, 1, 2, 3]

#marker - square
m = "s"

#scatter plot
plt.scatter(x, y, marker = m)

plt.show()

Output

Conclusion

In this Matplotlib Tutorial, we learned how to set a specific marker for drawing data points in Scatter Plot.