Plotting 3-tuple data points in a surface / contour plot using matplotlib

Posted by morpheous on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by morpheous
Published on 2010-06-10T08:27:45Z Indexed on 2010/06/10 8:32 UTC
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python

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matplotlib

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rstats

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rpy2

I have some surface data that is generated by an external program as XYZ values. I want to create the following graphs, using matplotlib:

Surface plot
Contour plot
Contour plot overlayed with a surface plot

I have looked at several examples for plotting surfaces and contours in matplotlib - however, the Z values seems to be a function of X and Y i.e. Y ~ f(X,Y).

I assume that I will somehow need to transform my Y variables, but I have not seen any example yet, that shows how to do this.

So, my question is this: given a set of (X,Y,Z) points, how may I generate Surface and contour plots from that data?

BTW, just to clarify, I do NOT want to create scatter plots. Also although I mentioned matplotlib in the title, I am not averse to using rpy(2), if that will allow me to create these charts.

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