Re: [Matplotlib-users] [matplotlib-devel] RFC: candidates for a new default colormap

[Paul H. <pmh...@gm...>]

On Fri, Jun 5, 2015 at 9:17 AM, Jody Klymak <jk...@uv...> wrote:

>
>
> Anyways, I guess I am advocating trying to find a colormap with a very
> obvious central hue to represent zero.  Anomaly data sets are *very*
> common, so having a default colormap that doesn’t do something reasonable
> with them may be a turn off to new users.
>
>
Personally, I disagree. I think that sequential colormaps make better
defaults b/c then the software isn't making an assumptions about the
central tendency of your data.

You raise a good point though. Perhaps a compromise is to make "sequential"
and "diverging" valid arguments to any function that takes "cmap" and falls
back to the default colormap and e.g. "coolwarm", respectively.