For a histogram, how can I keep all specified bin-ticks along the x-axis and show number-labels only for specified bin-ticks?

Question

I have a histogram with centered bin-ticks.

As seen in the picture, the numbered labels of each bin-tick are so close to each other that the numbers are not as legible as I'd like them to be. I would like to keep the centered bin-ticks in my plot, but with labeling the value of every other bin-tick.

As an example, the first bin-tick is 2.5 and each bin-width is 5, so the next bin-tick is 7.5, the one after that is 12.5, etc. I would like the tick-marks on the x-axis to be visible at 2.5, 7.5, 12.5, etc, but I would like only the number-label 2.5, 12.5, etc to be visible on the x-axis.

How could I go about doing this? The code to create a histogram similar to mine (dependent on random module for values) is posted below.

PS - I could decrease the number of bins to fit all the numbered-labels along the x-axis, but I would prefer to keep the number of bins as is because I am applying this base case to a much larger dataset with specified bin numbers.

import random
a = 48
b = 8
randg = []
for index in range(100):
    randg.append( random.gauss(a,b) )
data = sorted(randg)

small = 0 
big = 100 
numbins = 20 
binwide = (big - small) / numbins 
binleft = [] # left boundaries of bins
for index in range(numbins):
    binleft.append(small + index * binwide)
binbounds = [val for val in binleft] 
binbounds.append(big) # don't forget right boundary of last bin

binmids = [] # midpt of bins (for ticks)
for index in range(len(binbounds)-1):
    binmids.append( binwide/2 + index * binwide )

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
plt.hist(data, bins = binbounds)
plt.xticks(binmids)
plt.show()

Answer 1

If you are fine with omitting every second tick as well, an easy solution is to set the ticks to only every second entry of the binmids list.

plt.xticks(binmids[::2]) 

If this is not an option, you can set the ticks to the complete binmids list, but then set every other ticklabel to an empty string ("").

plt.xticks(binmids)
ticklabels = [ binmids[i] if i % 2 == 0 else "" for i in range(len(binmids)) ]
plt.gca().set_xticklabels( ticklabels )