altair versus seaborn

1. Declarative vs. Procedural API

• Altair is declarative: you specify what you want (e.g. “plot x against y with color by group”) and Vega‑Lite handles how to draw it.
• Seaborn is procedural: you call functions (e.g. sns.scatterplot) and pass in data and styling arguments each time.

Aspect	Altair	Seaborn
API style	Declarative (chart grammar)	Procedural / function‑based
Underlying engine	Vega‑Lite (JSON specification + JavaScript rendering)	Matplotlib (static plotting)
Interactivity	Built‑in (hover, zoom, selection)	Limited (requires extra work with mpld3, Bokeh…)
Output formats	HTML/JSON (notebooks, web apps, dashboards)	Static images (PNG, SVG, PDF)
Learning curve	Moderate (chart grammar concepts)	Gentle (familiar Matplotlib semantics)

2. Interactivity and Web Embedding

• Altair charts are natively interactive and embed easily in Jupyter, Voila, or web apps.
• Seaborn produces static figures; interactivity must be layered on separately.

# Altair example
import altair as alt, pandas as pd
 
df = pd.DataFrame({
    'height': [150, 160, 170, 180],
    'weight': [55, 60, 65, 75],
    'gender': ['F','F','M','M']
})
 
alt.Chart(df).mark_circle(size=100).encode(
    x='height',
    y='weight',
    color='gender'
).interactive()

# Seaborn equivalent
import seaborn as sns
sns.scatterplot(data=df, x='height', y='weight', hue='gender')

3. Data Transformation and Pipelines

• Altair can perform aggregations, binning, and joins within the chart specification using the $transform pipeline.
• Seaborn expects you to preprocess data (e.g. with Pandas) before plotting.

4. Ecosystem Integration

• Altair integrates well with data‑streaming and dashboard tools (e.g. Streamlit, Panel).
• Seaborn sits atop Matplotlib and is ideal for quick exploratory plots and publication‑quality static figures.

When to choose which?

Scenario	Altair	Seaborn
Interactive dashboards	✔︎	✘ (needs extra layers)
Quick exploratory static plots	✘ (requires more setup)	✔︎
Complex data transformations within the chart spec	✔︎	✘ (preprocess externally)
Embedding in web pages	✔︎	✘
Publication‑quality static figures	✘ (possible, but Matplotlib more flexible)	✔︎