Put A Gap/break In A Line Plot

I have a data set with effectively 'continuous' sensor readings, with the occasional gap. However there are several periods in which no data was recorded. These gaps are significa

Solution 1:

Masked arrays work well for this. You just need to mask the first of the points you don't want to connect:

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

t1 = np.arange(0, 8, 0.05)
mask_start = len(t1)
t2 = np.arange(10, 14, 0.05)
t = np.concatenate([t1, t2])
c = np.cos(t)     # an aside, but it's better to use numpy ufuncs than list comps

mc = ma.array(c)
mc[mask_start] = ma.masked
plt.figure()
plt.plot(t, mc)
plt.title('Using masked arrays')

plt.show()

At least on my system (OSX, Python 2.7, mpl 1.1.0), I don't have any issues with panning, etc.