[Q] How to compare multiple lines on the same plot? #3035

Ynjxsjmh · 2021-12-13T06:20:15Z

In the document of Line Plot - Documentation, it says

Visualize metrics, customize axes, and compare multiple lines on the same plot

But how to do these? There is not even one line of code to show this matter.

vanpelt · 2021-12-13T18:12:36Z

You just call wandb.log: https://docs.wandb.ai/guides/track/log

Ynjxsjmh · 2021-12-14T00:53:51Z

@vanpelt Thanks for your reply, I have tried the code following:

import wandb
import numpy as np


wandb.init(project="test", entity="xxxx")

wandb.log({"my_custom_id":
           wandb.plot.line_series(
               xs=range(100),
               ys=[range(100), np.random.randint(100, size=100)],
               keys=["y1", "y2"],
               title="Multiline",
               xname="steps"
           )})

The picture I get after choosing Edit Panel is following:

The picture I want to get is like

Difference between with these pictures are

Mine doesn’t have Data, Group etc tabs.
There are two types of legend name and lineKey in mine rather than one type.

vanpelt · 2021-12-14T02:00:23Z

Hey @Ynjxsjmh you likely don't want to use our custom plot functionality but instead just log the raw data, i.e.

import random
import wandb

wandb.init(project="test", entity="xxxx")
for i in range(100):
    wandb.log({"y1": random.random(), "y2": random.random(), "x": i})

Then you can edit any chart in your workspace to show both y1 and y2 plotted against "x":

Ynjxsjmh · 2021-12-14T04:55:03Z

@vanpelt Thanks you for letting me know I should manually select y on Data tab to compare multiple lines on the same plot. I start to know that the Line Plot - Documentation is talking about how to use the web interface to customize the plot rather than with code.

My confusion is that is it possible to customize the plot with code like matplotlib? For example, in matplotlib

With plt.plot(x, y, c=(0.25, 0.25, 1.00), lw=2, label="Blue signal", zorder=10), I could plot a line with color (0.25, 0.25, 1.00), line width 2, zorder 10 and legend name Blue signal
With plt.legend(), I could show the legend.
With plt.title(), I could set the plot title.
With plt.fill_between(), I could fill the area between two horizontal curves.

However in wandb, it seems I need to manually set them through web interface:

It would be inconvenient if I want to compare y1, y2 etc. through Experiment1, Experiment2 etc.

It's possible to log Matplotlib and Plotly Plots | Log Plots - Documentation directly but it lacks some wandb features like Smoothing(Exponential Moving Average, Gaussian, Running Average) and loses the original fill_between().

import wandb

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt


wandb.init(project="test", entity="xxx")

figure, ax = plt.subplots()
y1 = np.random.randint(100, size=100)
ax.plot(range(100), y1, label='y1', color='blue')
ax.fill_between(range(100), y1-10, y1+10, alpha=.5)
ax.plot(range(100), np.random.randint(100, size=100), label='y2', color='red')
ax.set_title("Experiment")

ax.legend()
plt.tight_layout()

wandb.log({'chart': plt})

vanpelt · 2021-12-14T21:30:41Z

@Ynjxsjmh yep, when logging matplot lib objects you lose the ability to compare and we're just rendering with Plotly so you can only do what Plotly allows. The only other alternative if you want full control over how a chart looks is our custom plots which you were using initially. You can modify the vega spec and make it do anything that vega can do but it's a steep learning curve and can be pretty complicated. You can learn more about custom charts here.

Ynjxsjmh · 2021-12-15T00:36:01Z

Thank you for your generosity!

ArikVoronov · 2022-08-08T14:51:00Z

Hi, I'm in need of the same feature (multi line plots) and the proposed solutions aren't really working in my case -

Uploading line_series or matplotlib plots can't be done incrementally per epoch which is how other metrics are done (am I correct here?) and is very time consuming at the end of the training session. It also removes many helpful features from the plot, such as changing the x axis and smoothing.

The other option requires manual intervention which just isn't realistic for many training sessions (I'm running a large sweep)

Are there any plans to add this feature?

ArturPrzybysz · 2023-03-10T14:22:52Z

@vanpelt Came here to mention that it is indeed a need functionality and it is a pain to have to either collect the plot data and access it only after the session is done, or have configure the plot manually each time.

Is there any plan to revisit this?

Same with 1 level of nested planes like wandb.log({"level1": {"level2": {"value": 1.0}}}.

flavioschenker · 2023-05-03T08:12:28Z

@ArturPrzybysz agree! Demand is still there. Especially the simplest case, where you want to compare training with validation loss on the same plot. This is still not possible without manually configure the plot each time.

spfrommer · 2023-07-17T18:02:06Z

Bump. This is basic functionality in tensorboard via the "custom_scalars" feature and it's frustrating that there is nothing comparable in wandb.

ugurbolat · 2023-10-20T15:41:56Z

Any updates on this feature?

JirkoRu · 2023-10-27T12:36:19Z

I also would love this feature!

ezhang7423 · 2023-11-18T21:50:41Z

Bump! It seems that being able to configure the panel programmatically similar to how one can currently edit a report programmatically would be the easiest way to do this..

assafbk · 2024-03-12T07:18:30Z

Any updates on this feature?

vaibhav-entrupy · 2024-08-02T20:47:51Z

I would like to see this feature as well. I have several groups of line plots to show on the separate graphs. doing them all on the UI is too much work.

Ynjxsjmh closed this as completed Dec 15, 2021

garrett361 mentioned this issue May 22, 2025

[Feature]: Display two curves in one graph? #4449

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[Q] How to compare multiple lines on the same plot? #3035

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[Q] How to compare multiple lines on the same plot? #3035

[Q] How to compare multiple lines on the same plot? #3035

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