Re: [matplotlib-devel] New plot type idea -- EventRaster

[Todd <tod...@gm...>]

On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 3:51 PM, Nathaniel Smith <nj...@po...> wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 2:33 PM, Todd <tod...@gm...> wrote:
>> This sort of plot is used ubiquitously in neuroscience.  It is used to show
>> the time of discrete neural (brain cell) events (called "spikes") over time
>> in repeated trials, and is generally called a spike raster, raster plot, or
>> raster graph.  However, it can be used in any situation where you are only
>> concerned with the position of events but not their amplitude, especially if
>> you want to look for patterns in those events or look for differences
>> between multiple sequences of events.
>
> This is very closely related to "rug plots", which are often used as
> an axis annotation or elsewhere where it's nice to have a small 1-d
> density plot. Examples:
>   https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sjm217/projects/graphics/
>   http://rforge.org/2009/08/10/fancy-rugs-in-regression-plots/

The implementation I am thinking of for this plot type would also be
able to handle these sorts of plots, although it would probably
require creating horizontal and vertical variants.