# How do I plot a matrix of ratings?

I have a .csv file called ratings.csv with the following structure:

userID, movieID, rating
3,      12,      5
2,      7,       6


The rating scale goes from 0 to 5 stars. I want to be able to plot the sparsity of the matrix like it's done in the following picture:

As you can see, ratings scale goes from 0 to 5 on the right. It is a very well thought plot.

I have Matlab, Python, R etc. Could you come up with something and help me? I’ve tried hard but I cannot find the way to do it.

You're looking for a heatmap. Check out e.g. https://stackoverflow.com/q/33282368/3924118 (if you like Python more than the others). See also this documentation.

I did it!

A = importdata('u.data');
user_id = A(:, 1);
movie_id = A(:, 2);
rating = A(:, 3);

% Build matrix R and w (weights matrix)
R = zeros(943, 1682);
w = zeros(943, 1682);
for i=1:100000
R(user_id(i), movie_id(i)) = rating(i);
w(user_id(i), movie_id(i)) = 1;
end

m = HeatMap(R)
ax = hm.plot; % 'ax' will be a handle to a standard MATLAB axes.
colorbar('Peer', ax); % Turn the colorbar on
caxis(ax, [0 5]); % Adjust the color limits


Output: