Data Visualisation for Beginners: How to create a Waterfall Chart in Python

A simple guide to visualise data using Python

A waterfall chart is a useful visual representation of changes in a value over time or through a series of events. In Python, we can create a waterfall chart using the matplotlib library. In this tutorial, we will walk you through the steps to create a waterfall chart in Python.

Step 1: Install Matplotlib

Before we can create a waterfall chart in Python, we need to install the matplotlib library. To do this, open your terminal or command prompt and enter the following command:

pip install matplotlib

Step 2: Import Libraries

Once we have installed matplotlib, we need to import it along with other libraries that we will use. In this example, we will use pandas and numpy to create our data. To import the libraries, use the following code:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import pandas as pd
import numpy as np

Step 3: Create Data

We need data to create a waterfall chart. In this example, we will create a simple data frame with five values. We will use the pandas library to create this data frame.