matplotlib advanced stacked bar - matplotlib

Question

matplotlib plot bars
It can be regular like http://matplotlib.org/examples/api/barchart_demo.html
Let's define this as [M, F]
It can be stacked like http://matplotlib.org/examples/pylab_examples/bar_stacked.html
Let's define this as [M + F]
Now how to plot [M, F + other]

Answer 1

If I understand you correctly, you want to have a stack plot with more than two elements stacked? If yes, that goes pretty straight forward as in the example you posted:
#!/usr/bin/env python
# a stacked bar plot with errorbars
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
N = 5
menMeans = [20, 35, 30, 35, 27]
womenMeans = [25, 32, 34, 20, 25]
otherMeans = [5, 2, 4, 8, 5]
menStd = [2, 3, 4, 1, 2]
womenStd = [3, 5, 2, 3, 3]
otherStd = [1, 1, 1, 1, 1]
ind = np.arange(N) # the x locations for the groups
width = 0.35 # the width of the bars: can also be len(x) sequence
p1 = plt.bar(ind, menMeans, width, color='r', yerr=womenStd)
p2 = plt.bar(ind, womenMeans, width, color='y',
bottom=menMeans, yerr=menStd)
p3 = plt.bar(ind, otherMeans, width, color='b',
bottom=[menMeans[j] + womenMeans[j] for j in range(len(menMeans)) ],
yerr=otherStd)
plt.ylabel('Scores')
plt.title('Scores by group and gender')
plt.xticks(ind+width/2., ('G1', 'G2', 'G3', 'G4', 'G5') )
plt.yticks(np.arange(0,81,10))
plt.legend( (p1[0], p2[0], p3[0]), ('Men', 'Women', 'Other') )
plt.show()