How To Graph Points With Sympy?

Question

I need to calculate and graph a function and it's first two derivatives. Then, I need to graph the minimum and maximum points of the original function on the graph. I have calculated these, but am lost as to how to graph the data. The x values for the minimum/maximum points are criticalPoints[]

with the y values being

criticalPointsY[]

Here is the segment of code where the error appears.

equation=CreateFunction();
    firstDeriv=equation.diff(x);
    secondDeriv=firstDeriv.diff(x);
    print(equation);
criticalPoints=solveset(firstDeriv,x);
criticalPointsY=[];
for a in criticalPoints:
    criticalPointsY.append(equation.subs(x,a));

p=plot(equation,firstDeriv,secondDeriv,(x,-10,10));
# Need to add the critical points to the graph. We have them, and the
# y values, but need to put them on the graphs.
print(criticalPoints)
print(criticalPointsY);
for a in range(0, len(criticalPoints)):
    xval=criticalPoints[a];
    yval=criticalPointsY[a];
    plt.plot(xval, yval, 'ro')
p.show();
plt.show();

When I run the program, I get this error. `

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "--------", line 58, in <module>
    xval=criticalPoints[a];
TypeError: 'FiniteSet' object does not support indexing

I have tried plotting the points on p and get a different error

    p.plot(criticalPoints,criticalPointsY);
AttributeError: 'Plot' object has no attribute 'plot'

Is there a way to plot points on this graph? (p)

Answer 1

A different approach with other answers to get the figure and axes from Plot. then add additional plots like dots.

Use matplotlib.figure to save (only) the plot as an image (no display).

import sympy as sp
from sympy.plotting.plot import MatplotlibBackend, Plot


def get_sympy_subplots(plot:Plot):
    backend = MatplotlibBackend(plot)

    backend.process_series()
    backend.fig.tight_layout()
    return backend.fig, backend.ax[0]


# plot from sympy
x = sp.symbols('x')
p = sp.plot(x, x**2, show=False)

# plot from backend
fig, axe = get_sympy_subplots(p)
# add additional plots
axe.plot([1,2,3], [1,2,3], "o")
fig.savefig("plot_from_figure")

---

Using plt on the backend to display the plot

def get_sympy_subplots(plot:Plot):
    backend = MatplotlibBackend(plot)

    backend.process_series()
    backend.fig.tight_layout()
    return backend.plt


# plot from sympy
x = sp.symbols('x')
p = sp.plot(x, x**2, show=False)

# plot from backend
plt = get_sympy_subplots(p)
plt.plot([1,2,3], [1,2,3], "o")

plt.show()

Answer 2

SymPy plots can be combined with p.extend. However, SymPy plot types do not include point plots, which is what you want for critical points. In such cases one should use matplotlib directly, which SymPy would do anyway under the hood.

Here is an example based on your code, but without semicolons, with list comprehension, and with matplotlib used for all plots. Note thatlambdify provides a way to efficiently evaluate a bunch of SymPy expressions at a bunch of points.

from sympy import *
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

x = symbols('x')
equation = x*exp(-x**2/10)
firstDeriv = equation.diff(x)
secondDeriv = firstDeriv.diff(x)
criticalPoints = list(solveset(firstDeriv, x))
criticalPointsY = [equation.subs(x, a) for a in criticalPoints]
xx = np.linspace(-10, 10, 1000)
yy = lambdify(x, [equation, firstDeriv, secondDeriv])(xx)
plt.plot(xx, np.transpose(yy))
plt.plot(criticalPoints, criticalPointsY, 'k*')
plt.show()