Plotting text from a dictionary with Matplotlib

Question

I have the following dictionary:

top = {'aaaa': {'☹': 7, '👹': 12, '😡': 6},
      'bbbb': {'👏': 2, '😉': 2, '😘': 2},
      'cccc': {'☹': 5, '😆': 3, '🙂': 3},
      'dddd': {'🌝': 8, '😈': 7, '🤗': 3},
      'eeee': {'☺': 3, '😂': 5, '😔': 4},
      'ffff': {'☹': 5, '💞': 5, '😢': 5}}

Each 'aaaa' or 'bbbb' is the user's name, and his values is the emoji he is using the most. I want to plot a decent looking graph to visualize. After a few tries, this is my best work:

with the code:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

def top_emoji(top):
    fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(8, 5))
    y = 9
    level = 0
    start = 9
    for name, dictionary in top.items():
        ax.text(start, y - level, name, fontsize=20)
        x = 3
        for emoj in dictionary.keys():
            ax.text(start - x, y - level, emoj, fontname='Segoe UI Emoji', fontsize=20)
            x += 1
        level += 1

    ax.axis([0, 10, 0, 10])
    ax.get_xaxis().set_visible(False)
    ax.get_yaxis().set_visible(False)
    ax.axis('off')
    plt.show()

Which is terrible in my opinion. Any recommendations for improvements will be much appreciated.

Answer 1

Your code might be a bit clearer without level & start, preferring to manipulate just x & y.

You might write a sorting helper function, and change the emoj loop to this:

    for x, emoj in enumerate(emoj_by_score(dictionary)):

You have some hard coded values that you could derive by inspecting the top input argument. On the whole, it doesn't seem so terrible. It is reasonably clear.