Matplotlib problem: why is a colorbar deleting my xlabel? And how can i avoid it?

Question

I'm working on the famous housing prices data set, and I encountered a problem with my xlabel not showing. I figured out that this is caused by plotting a colorbar. I'd like to know how I can plot the colorbar and still have my xlabel.

Edit: The dataset can be loaded with the sklearn library:

from sklearn.datasets.california_housing import fetch_california_housing
housing = fetch_california_housing()

This is the code without the xlabel:

housing.plot(kind='scatter', x = 'longitude', y= 'latitude', alpha = 0.2, figsize=(9,6),
         s = housing['population']/100, cmap = plt.get_cmap('jet'), 
         label = 'population',
         c = housing['median_house_value'],
         colorbar=True, 
         title = 'Housing prices in relation to location and population density'
         );

plt.legend();

Scatter Plot with colorbar but without xlabel:

This is the code with the xlabel (but no colorbar):

housing.plot(kind='scatter', x = 'longitude', y= 'latitude', alpha = 0.2, figsize=(9,6),
         s = housing['population']/100, cmap = plt.get_cmap('jet'), 
         label = 'population',
         c = housing['median_house_value'],
         colorbar=False, 
         title = 'Housing prices in relation to location and population density'
         );

 plt.legend();

Scatter Plot without colorbar but with xlabel:

Any tips or hints are greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

You need to define the matplotlib axes object in your df.plot() call, here is a minimal example:

import pandas as pd
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

# Dummy data
iris = pd.read_csv('https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mwaskom/seaborn-data/master/iris.csv')

# Create a figure and get the axes object
fig, ax = plt.subplots()

# The plot
iris.plot(kind    = 'scatter',              # Random parameter 
          x       = 'sepal_width', 
          y       = 'petal_width',  
          alpha   = 0.2, 
          figsize = (9,6), 
          cmap    = plt.get_cmap('jet'),
          s       = iris['sepal_length']*10,
          c       = iris['sepal_length'],
          colorbar= True,
          ax      = ax);                    # Pass the axes object !

Which give:

Instead of: