How to Annotate Bar Plot in Pandas

DataPlotPlus -

This guide explains how to annotate bars in a Pandas bar plot to display their values.

When to Annotate a Bar Plot?

Annotations are useful when:

  • You want to display exact values on the bars instead of relying on the y-axis
  • The differences between values are small, making it hard to compare visually
  • You need to highlight specific data points in reports or dashboards

Steps to Annotate Bars in a Bar Plot

  • Import the required libraries (pandas and matplotlib)
  • Create a DataFrame with categorical data
  • Use DataFrame.plot(kind='bar') to generate a bar plot
  • Iterate through the bars and use ax.text() to annotate them
  • Show the plot using plt.show()

More information can be found: Pandas DataFrame.plot

Data: Sales Performance of Stores

This dataset contains sales revenue (in thousands of dollars) for different stores.

Store Sales (in $1000)
Store A 45
Store B 30
Store C 55
Store D 70
Store E 40

Example: Annotating Bars in a Bar Plot

import pandas as pd
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

# Create DataFrame with sales data
df = pd.DataFrame({'Store': ['Store A', 'Store B', 'Store C', 'Store D', 'Store E'],
                   'Sales': [45, 30, 55, 70, 40]})

# Create bar plot
fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(8, 5))
df.plot(kind='bar', x='Store', y='Sales', ax=ax, color='skyblue', legend=False)

# Annotate bars with values
for index, value in enumerate(df['Sales']):
    ax.text(index, value + 2, str(value), ha='center', fontsize=12)

# Set labels and title
ax.set_ylabel("Sales ($1000)")
ax.set_title("Sales Performance by Store")

plt.show()

Output

  • The bar plot displays sales revenue for each store.
  • The exact sales values are annotated above each bar.

Customizing the Annotations

  • Adjust the position of text by modifying value + 2
  • Change the font size using fontsize=12
  • Align text using ha='center' (horizontal alignment)
ax.text(index, value + 2, str(value), ha='center', fontsize=12, color='red')

Resources