Delightful Figures in Python Series: Plotting Geographical Maps

With all of the election maps we have seen this week in the US, I thought it was time to release the next edition of Delightful Figures in Python with — you guessed it — plotting maps in Python!

I wanted to put together a series to guide Python-ers through generating delightful figures. Delightful figures can help you effectively tell your story, add credibility to your data analysis, and give your papers/articles/blogs a pop of fun. In Part 1 of the series, we focused on Donut Plots and in Part 2 of the series we created Word Clouds.

Getting Started

Some basic assumptions before we get started: I am assuming you have, at minimum, a basic understanding of python and you have a working knowledge of pandas, numpy, and matplotlib.

The dataset

This tutorial is BYODS (Bring your own data set), but if you want to follow along with the dataset I am using, I am using the Kaggle UFO sightings dataset, available here.

Make sure you have imported pandas, numpy, and matplotlib (including Basemap) before starting: