Linear regression with matplotlib / numpy

This code:

from scipy.stats import linregress

linregress(x,y) #x and y are arrays or lists.

gives out a list with the following:

slope : float
slope of the regression line
intercept : float
intercept of the regression line
r-value : float
correlation coefficient
p-value : float
two-sided p-value for a hypothesis test whose null hypothesis is that the slope is zero
stderr : float
Standard error of the estimate

Source

arange generates lists (well, numpy arrays); type help(np.arange) for the details. You don't need to call it on existing lists.

>>> x = [1,2,3,4]
>>> y = [3,5,7,9] 
>>> 
>>> m,b = np.polyfit(x, y, 1)
>>> m
2.0000000000000009
>>> b
0.99999999999999833

I should add that I tend to use poly1d here rather than write out "m*x+b" and the higher-order equivalents, so my version of your code would look something like this:

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

x = [1,2,3,4]
y = [3,5,7,10] # 10, not 9, so the fit isn't perfect

coef = np.polyfit(x,y,1)
poly1d_fn = np.poly1d(coef) 
# poly1d_fn is now a function which takes in x and returns an estimate for y

plt.plot(x,y, 'yo', x, poly1d_fn(x), '--k') #'--k'=black dashed line, 'yo' = yellow circle marker

plt.xlim(0, 5)
plt.ylim(0, 12)