Return Boxplot Instance

[jseabold]

I saw that @wesm was doing a bit of a plotting refactor. One thing that might be nice is to optionally return the Boxplot dict from matplotlib for df.boxplot. It makes it easier to do ex post styling. See: http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/examples/pylab_examples/boxplot_demo2.html

[wesm]

Consider it a done deal

[jseabold]

Ah, great. Might we also want the axes returned too in this case? It doesn't look like they are from just a quick look.

[wesm]

possibly. what do you think it should return from a grid of boxplots?

[jseabold]

Hmm. A list of lists (or array, or dataframe) containing dicts? If it's
asked for. I thought about a ret_boxplot=False default or something like
this. I was just playing with some boxplots earlier today and noticed this
dict when I wanted to change some things. I was thinking you'd be able to
get it somehow from the axes after a boxplot was made, but I couldn't
figure out how.

[wesm]

Yeah. Of course on the other hand I think it's absurd how much code is required to do the customization in the linked matplotlib gallery plot, and wonder if perhaps building a better abstraction is in order

[jseabold]

True. I don't think it would be too much work to add a few kwargs to ax.boxplot in matplotlib either.