retbins

Retbins is a parameter used in histogram plotting functions to request that the function return the bin edges used for binning the data. It is most commonly associated with Matplotlib's pyplot.hist function. When retbins is True, the function includes the computed bin boundaries in its returned data along with the histogram counts. The bin edges delimit the intervals that compose the histogram and are useful for mapping values to bins, labeling plots, or performing further analysis.

Usage: Example: data = [...] plt.hist(data, bins=30, retbins=True). This call returns the histogram counts and the bin edges, allowing the caller to reuse the exact bin boundaries for other calculations. The exact return signature may include patch objects depending on the backend and version.

Notes: The bin edges are the coordinates of the bin boundaries along the x-axis. Retbins helps situations where the code later needs to reference the same bin edges, for instance to annotate a chart or to join with other datasets that share the same binning. The option is library-specific and not a universal property of all histogram implementations; other libraries may use different mechanisms to expose bin edges.

See also: histogram, bin, bin edge, binning, matplotlib.