How to avoid overlapping y ticks?

My problem is very simple to explain and maybe the solution too.

I just don’t understand why it is this complicated in matplotlib to build something baisc like I’m trying to do.

I want to make an empty plot with an x from 1 to 12 and and y from 2000 to 2005.

I made the code below but there is two problems :

• the y ticks are overlapping for some reason
• there is an extra gap before 1 in the x ticks

I’m using 3.8.2.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

plt.figure(figsize=(6, 4))

plt.xticks(range(1, 13))
plt.yticks(range(2000, 2006))

plt.show()

Can you show me guys how to solve this problem ?

>Solution :

Your issue is that your Y-limits are 0-1 by default, getting extended to 0-2005 after setting your custom axis.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

plt.figure(figsize=(6, 4))

plt.xticks(range(1, 13))
plt.yticks(range(2000, 2005+1))
plt.ylim(2000-0.5, 2005+0.5)  # setting the limits to be 2000-2005 (±0.5)

Output:

Note that this is the same on the X-axis (0-12 instead of 1-12), but less visible. You can perform the same operation on this axis with plt.xlim(1-0.5, 12+0.5).

Generic approach:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

plt.figure(figsize=(6, 4))

Xmin, Xmax = 1, 12
Ymin, Ymax = 2000, 2005
offset = 0.1

plt.xticks(range(Xmin, Xmax+1))
plt.yticks(range(Ymin, Ymax+1))
plt.xlim(Xmin-offset, Xmax+offset)
plt.ylim(Ymin-offset, Ymax+offset)

Output: