matplotlib: reduce empty space on axis

The following code (obtained from here):

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import pandas as pd


# Prepare Data
df = pd.read_csv("https://github.com/selva86/datasets/raw/master/mtcars.csv")
x = df.loc[:, ['mpg']]
df['mpg_z'] = (x - x.mean())/x.std()
df['colors'] = ['red' if x < 0 else 'darkgreen' for x in df['mpg_z']]
df.sort_values('mpg_z', inplace=True)
df.reset_index(inplace=True)

# Draw plot
plt.figure(figsize=(14,16), dpi= 80)
plt.scatter(df.mpg_z, df.index, s=450, alpha=.6, color=df.colors)
for x, y, tex in zip(df.mpg_z, df.index, df.mpg_z):
    t = plt.text(x, y, round(tex, 1), horizontalalignment='center', 
                 verticalalignment='center', fontdict={'color':'white'})

# Decorations
# Lighten borders
plt.gca().spines["top"].set_alpha(.3)
plt.gca().spines["bottom"].set_alpha(.3)
plt.gca().spines["right"].set_alpha(.3)
plt.gca().spines["left"].set_alpha(.3)

plt.yticks(df.index, df.cars)
plt.title('Diverging Dotplot of Car Mileage', fontdict={'size':20})
plt.xlabel('$Mileage$')
plt.grid(linestyle='--', alpha=0.5)
plt.xlim(-2.5, 2.5)
plt.show()

Gives me this:

What I’m trying to do is reduce the empty space on the y-axis, indicated here by the red bars:

How can I do this? Changing the height of the figure doesn’t seem to help.

Answer

One quick solution is to manually set the margins using

plt.margins(y=0) # no margin at all
plt.margins(y=1/len(df)) # equal margin

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Answer