Parallel coordinates plotting using pandas

Overview:

Parallel coordinates is one of the oldest visualization techniques for understanding multivariate data.
In a parallel coordinates plot, variables are represented through vertical parallel lines. These lines form the axes for the plot.
Each data point of the multivariate data is marked in these vertical axes which result in a polyline.
One data point corresponds to one polyline. In case of multiple data points with the same values, a poly line is drawn multiple times, one over another.
The height of the vertical axes does not correspond to any order in the data.
The parallel axis of the parallel coordinates plot can be drawn horizontally as well.
The lines denoting the data point are typically not smooth as in case of Andrews Curves, which is another visualization technique that projects the multivariate data to a vector formed by the co-efficients of the finite Fourier series.

Example:

# Example Python program that creates
# a parallel coordinates plot using pandas
# plotting module
# Data Courtesy: https://archive.ics.uci.edu/ml/datasets/Breast+Tissue
import pandas as pds
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

# Read data from a CSV file into a DataFrame
df = pds.read_csv("BreastTissue.csv");

# Use the DataFrame instance and draw the parallel coordinates plot
pds.plotting.parallel_coordinates(df, 'Class',
color=('#c0392b', '#9b59b6', '#5499c7',
'#1abc9c', '#f1c40f', '#f39c12'));

plt.show(block=True);

Output:

Parallel Coordinates plot using pandas for the BreastTissue dataset