Python PLOTLY I want to make the circles clearer

Question

import plotly.express as px
import pandas as pd
  

data = pd.read_csv("Book1.csv")
  
fig = px.scatter(data, y="Category", x="Mean", color="Change")
fig.update_layout(
    xaxis=dict(title="Title",range=[2,3],),
    yaxis=dict(title="Mean"),
    title="Title"
) 

fig.update_traces(marker=dict(size=30,
                              line=dict(width=2,
                                        color='DarkSlateGrey')),
                  selector=dict(mode='markers'))
fig.show()

I want to make the circles clearer, like more spaced out or scattered. Do you have any suggestions?

Here is the plot:

Answer 1

There is a technique called jittering where you add a small amount of noise to make it less likely for the circles to overlap as much as in your sample figure. It's not perfect, but here is an example of what you can accomplish. You can also try regenerating the plot with a different amount of jittering, as well as different random seeds until you are happy with the result.

import plotly.express as px
import numpy as np
import pandas as pd

# data = pd.read_csv("Book1.csv")
data = pd.DataFrame({
    'Category': ['More than usual']*5 + ['About the same']*5 + ['Less than usual']*5,
    'Mean': [2.2,2.4,2.22,2.24,2.6] + [2.4,2.41,2.5,2.1,2.12] + [2.81,2.1,2.5,2.45,2.42],
    'Change': [1]*5 + [2]*5 + [3]*5
})

category_to_value_map = {
    'Less than usual': 1,
    'About the same': 2,
    'More than usual': 3
}
data['y'] = data['Category'].map(category_to_value_map)

## apply jittering
max_jittering = 0.15
np.random.seed(4)
data['y'] = data['y'] + np.random.uniform(
    low=-1*max_jittering, 
    high=max_jittering, 
    size=len(data)
)

fig = px.scatter(data, y="y", x="Mean", color="Change")
fig.update_layout(
    xaxis=dict(title="Title",range=[2,3],),
    yaxis=dict(title="Mean"),
    title="Title"
) 

fig.update_traces(marker=dict(size=20,
                              line=dict(width=2,
                                        color='DarkSlateGrey')),
                  selector=dict(mode='markers'))
fig.update_layout(
    yaxis = dict(
        tickmode = 'array',
        tickvals = [1, 2, 3],
        ticktext = ['Less than usual', 'About the same', 'More than usual']
    )
)
fig.show()