matplotlib - Rotating axis text for each subplot

Question

Im trying to plot a scatter matrix. I'm building on the example given in this thread Is there a function to make scatterplot matrices in matplotlib?. Here I have just modified the code slightly to make the axis visible for all the subplots. The modified code is given below

import itertools
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

def main():
    np.random.seed(1977)
    numvars, numdata = 4, 10
    data = 10 * np.random.random((numvars, numdata))
    fig = scatterplot_matrix(data, ['mpg', 'disp', 'drat', 'wt'],
            linestyle='none', marker='o', color='black', mfc='none')
    fig.suptitle('Simple Scatterplot Matrix')
    plt.show()

def scatterplot_matrix(data, names, **kwargs):
    """Plots a scatterplot matrix of subplots.  Each row of "data" is plotted
    against other rows, resulting in a nrows by nrows grid of subplots with the
    diagonal subplots labeled with "names".  Additional keyword arguments are
    passed on to matplotlib's "plot" command. Returns the matplotlib figure
    object containg the subplot grid."""
    numvars, numdata = data.shape
    fig, axes = plt.subplots(nrows=numvars, ncols=numvars, figsize=(8,8))
    fig.subplots_adjust(hspace=0.05, wspace=0.05)

    for ax in axes.flat:
        # Hide all ticks and labels
        ax.xaxis.set_visible(True)
        ax.yaxis.set_visible(True)

#        # Set up ticks only on one side for the "edge" subplots...
#        if ax.is_first_col():
#            ax.yaxis.set_ticks_position('left')
#        if ax.is_last_col():
#            ax.yaxis.set_ticks_position('right')
#        if ax.is_first_row():
#            ax.xaxis.set_ticks_position('top')
#        if ax.is_last_row():
#            ax.xaxis.set_ticks_position('bottom')

    # Plot the data.
    for i, j in zip(*np.triu_indices_from(axes, k=1)):
        for x, y in [(i,j), (j,i)]:
            axes[x,y].plot(data[x], data[y], **kwargs)

    # Label the diagonal subplots...
    for i, label in enumerate(names):
        axes[i,i].annotate(label, (0.5, 0.5), xycoords='axes fraction',
                ha='center', va='center')

    # Turn on the proper x or y axes ticks.
    for i, j in zip(range(numvars), itertools.cycle((-1, 0))):
        axes[j,i].xaxis.set_visible(True)
        axes[i,j].yaxis.set_visible(True)
    fig.tight_layout()
    plt.xticks(rotation=45)
    fig.show()
    return fig

main()

I cant seem to be able to rotate the x-axis text of all the subplots. As it can be seen, i have tried the plt.xticks(rotation=45) trick. But this seems to perform the rotation for the last subplot alone.

Answer 1

Just iterate through the axes tied to the figure, set the active axes to the iterated object, and modify:

for ax in fig.axes:
    matplotlib.pyplot.sca(ax)
    plt.xticks(rotation=90)