Visualizing heat maps

Let's look at how to visualize heat maps in this recipe. This is a pictorial representation of data where two groups are associated point by point. The individual values that are contained in a matrix are represented as color values in the plot.

How to do it…

  1. Create a new Python file, and import the following packages:
    import numpy as np
    import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
  2. Define the two groups:
    # Define the two groups 
    group1 = ['France', 'Italy', 'Spain', 'Portugal', 'Germany'] 
    group2 = ['Japan', 'China', 'Brazil', 'Russia', 'Australia']
  3. Generate a random 2D matrix:
    # Generate some random values
    data = np.random.rand(5, 5)
  4. Create a figure:
    # Create a figure
    fig, ax = plt.subplots()
  5. Create the heat map:
    # Create the heat map heatmap = ax.pcolor(data, ...

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