"""
hexbin is an axes method or pyplot function that is essentially
a pcolor of a 2-D histogram with hexagonal cells.  It can be
much more informative than a scatter plot; in the first subplot
below, try substituting 'scatter' for 'hexbin'.
"""

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

n = 100000
x = np.random.standard_normal(n)
y = 2.0 + 3.0 * x + 4.0 * np.random.standard_normal(n)
xmin = x.min()
xmax = x.max()
ymin = y.min()
ymax = y.max()

plt.subplots_adjust(hspace=0.5)
plt.subplot(121)
plt.hexbin(x,y, cmap=cm.jet)
plt.axis([xmin, xmax, ymin, ymax])
plt.title("Hexagon binning")
cb = plt.colorbar()
cb.set_label('counts')

plt.subplot(122)
plt.hexbin(x,y,bins='log', cmap=cm.jet)
plt.axis([xmin, xmax, ymin, ymax])
plt.title("With a log color scale")
cb = plt.colorbar()
cb.set_label('log10(N)')

plt.show()