Matplotlib: Can we draw a histogram and a box plot on a same chart?

I have a question about drawing a histogram and a box plot Matplotlib.

I know I can draw a histogram and a box plot individually. My question is, is it possible to draw them on the same graph, such as a chart shown in this website? Springer Images

Thank you very much!

There are several ways to achieve this with matplotlib. The plt.subplots() method, and the AxesGrid1 and gridspec toolkits all provide very elegant solutions, but might take time to learn.

A simple, brute-force way to do this would be to manually add the axes objects to a figure yourself.

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

# fake data
x = np.random.lognormal(mean=2.25, sigma=0.75, size=37)

# setup the figure and axes
fig = plt.figure(figsize=(6,4))
bpAx = fig.add_axes([0.2, 0.7, 0.7, 0.2])   # left, bottom, width, height:
                                            # (adjust as necessary)
histAx = fig.add_axes([0.2, 0.2, 0.7, 0.5]) # left specs should match and
                                            # bottom + height on this line should
                                            # equal bottom on bpAx line
# plot stuff
bp = bpAx.boxplot(x, notch=True, vert=False)
h = histAx.hist(x, bins=7)

# confirm that the axes line up 
xlims = np.array([bpAx.get_xlim(), histAx.get_xlim()])
for ax in [bpAx, histAx]:
    ax.set_xlim([xlims.min(), xlims.max()])

bpAx.set_xticklabels([])  # clear out overlapping xlabels
bpAx.set_yticks([])  # don't need that 1 tick mark
plt.show()