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Archived discussions · Captured October 28, 2026

plot part of large amount of data

Community Support
bo.qiang
bo.qiangJan 11, 2017   #1

Hi,

I have a large amount of data (4GB) that need to be plotted with Bokeh. I don’t need to plot all data at once. Rather, I can plot a small portion of data and can use a scroll bar to adjust the viewing window. Is this possible with Bokeh? I am really new with Bokeh so please bear with me if the question has been mentioned before.

Another related question is do I need to load all the data to memory before plotting? Can Bokeh load only the part being plotted? I think this might help reduce the memory consumption and provide some speedup overall. Thanks a lot!

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Alex_Rice
Alex_RiceJan 15, 2017   #2

I would recommend aggregating or summarizing the data before trying to
visualize it. That sounds like too much data to visually just throw
into a chart or figure and have it be meaningful. Pandas and Numpy are
very useful for doing this sort of thing with Bokeh visualizations.
Also, oerhaps check out datashader also:

"""
Datashader is a graphics pipeline system for creating meaningful
representations of large amounts of data.
"""

···

On Wed, Jan 11, 2017 at 3:05 PM, <bo.qiang@nielsen.com> wrote:

Hi,

I have a large amount of data (4GB) that need to be plotted with Bokeh. I
don't need to plot all data at once. Rather, I can plot a small portion of
data and can use a scroll bar to adjust the viewing window. Is this possible
with Bokeh? I am really new with Bokeh so please bear with me if the
question has been mentioned before.

Another related question is do I need to load all the data to memory before
plotting? Can Bokeh load only the part being plotted? I think this might
help reduce the memory consumption and provide some speedup overall. Thanks
a lot!

--
Alex G Rice
rice.guido@gmail.com
alex@ricegeo.com
+1 505-603-5639

⌁   Link to post
James_A_Bednar1
James_A_Bednar1Jan 16, 2017   #3

Datashader would be very useful for plotting 4GB of data, particularly if there are some meaningful ways to aggregate it. Datashader also works well with dask to support out-of-core datasets; see e.g. the OSM datashader example. But note that currently datashader does not include any special support for partitioning your data, and thus it needs to make a complete pass through the dataset each time it needs to display something. Adding support for some form of partitioning (quadtrees, etc.) is on the roadmap, but does not currently have any funding, and so it will depend on getting some form of external support (or code contributions). We’re looking into options now for obtaining such funding, but don’t have anything to announce yet.

···

On Sun, Jan 15, 2017 at 4:41 PM, Alex Rice rice.guido@gmail.com wrote:

On Wed, Jan 11, 2017 at 3:05 PM, bo.qiang@nielsen.com wrote:

Hi,

I have a large amount of data (4GB) that need to be plotted with Bokeh. I

don’t need to plot all data at once. Rather, I can plot a small portion of

data and can use a scroll bar to adjust the viewing window. Is this possible

with Bokeh? I am really new with Bokeh so please bear with me if the

question has been mentioned before.

Another related question is do I need to load all the data to memory before

plotting? Can Bokeh load only the part being plotted? I think this might

help reduce the memory consumption and provide some speedup overall. Thanks

a lot!

I would recommend aggregating or summarizing the data before trying to

visualize it. That sounds like too much data to visually just throw

into a chart or figure and have it be meaningful. Pandas and Numpy are

very useful for doing this sort of thing with Bokeh visualizations.

Also, oerhaps check out datashader also:

“”"

Datashader is a graphics pipeline system for creating meaningful

representations of large amounts of data.

“”"

https://github.com/bokeh/datashader

–

Alex G Rice

rice.guido@gmail.com

alex@ricegeo.com

+1 505-603-5639

–

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Jim

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