python - Making histogram with Spark DataFrame column

Question

I am trying to make a histogram with a column from a dataframe which looks like

DataFrame[C0: int, C1: int, ...]

If I were to make a histogram with the column C1, what should I do?

Some things I have tried are

df.groupBy("C1").count().histogram()
df.C1.countByValue()

Which do not work because of mismatch in data types.

Answer 1

The pyspark_dist_explore package that @Chris van den Berg mentioned is quite nice. If you prefer not to add an additional dependency you can use this bit of code to plot a simple histogram.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
# Show histogram of the 'C1' column
bins, counts = df.select('C1').rdd.flatMap(lambda x: x).histogram(20)

# This is a bit awkward but I believe this is the correct way to do it 
plt.hist(bins[:-1], bins=bins, weights=counts)