python - How to draw axis in the middle of the figure?

Question

I want to draw a figure in matplotib where the axis are displayed within the plot itself not on the side

I have tried the following code from here:

import math
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

def sigmoid(x):
    a = []
    for item in x:
        a.append(1/(1+math.exp(-item)))
    return a

x = np.arange(-10., 10., 0.2)
sig = sigmoid(x)

plt.plot(x,sig)
plt.show()

The above code displays the figure like this:

What I would like to draw is something as follows (image from Wikipedia)

This question describes a similar problem, but it draws a reference line in the middle but no axis.

Answer 1

One way to do it is using spines:

import math
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

def sigmoid(x):
    a = []
    for item in x:
        a.append(1/(1+math.exp(-item)))
    return a


x = np.arange(-10., 10., 0.2)
sig = sigmoid(x)

fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(1, 1, 1)

# Move left y-axis and bottim x-axis to centre, passing through (0,0)
ax.spines['left'].set_position('center')
ax.spines['bottom'].set_position('center')

# Eliminate upper and right axes
ax.spines['right'].set_color('none')
ax.spines['top'].set_color('none')

# Show ticks in the left and lower axes only
ax.xaxis.set_ticks_position('bottom')
ax.yaxis.set_ticks_position('left')

plt.plot(x,sig)
plt.show()

shows: