In an answer to an earlier question of mine regarding fixing the colorspace for scatter images of 4D data, Tom10 suggested plotting values as symbols in order to double-check my data. An excellent idea. I've run some similar demos in the past, but I can't for the life of me find the demo I remember being quite simple. So, what's the easiest way to plot numerical values as the symbol in a scatter plot instead of 'o' for example? Tom10 suggested plt.txt(x,y,value)- and that is the implementation used in a number of examples. I however wonder if there's an easy way to evaluate "value" from my array of numbers? Can one simply say: str(valuearray) ? Do you need a loop to evaluate the values for plotting as suggested in the matplotlib demo section for 3D text scatter plots? Their example produces: However, they're doing something fairly complex in evaluating the locations as well as changing text direction based on data. So, is there a cute way to plot x,y,C data (where C is a value often taken as the color in the plot data- but instead I wish to make the symbol)? Again, I think we have a fair answer to this- I just wonder if there's an easier way?