How to plot a histogram using Matplotlib in Python with a list of data?

If you want a histogram, you dont need to attach any names to x-values because:

on x-axis you will have data bins
on y-axis counts (by default) or frequencies (density=True)

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
%matplotlib inline

np.random.seed(42)
x = np.random.normal(size=1000)

plt.hist(x, density=True, bins=30)  # density=False would make counts
plt.ylabel(Probability)
plt.xlabel(Data);

Note, the number of bins=30 was chosen arbitrarily, and there is Freedman–Diaconis rule to be more scientific in choosing the right bin width:

, where IQR is Interquartile range and n is total number of datapoints to plot

So, according to this rule one may calculate number of bins as:

q25, q75 = np.percentile(x, [25, 75])
bin_width = 2 * (q75 - q25) * len(x) ** (-1/3)
bins = round((x.max() - x.min()) / bin_width)
print(Freedman–Diaconis number of bins:, bins)
plt.hist(x, bins=bins);

Freedman–Diaconis number of bins: 82

And finally you can make your histogram a bit fancier with PDF line, titles, and legend:

import scipy.stats as st

plt.hist(x, density=True, bins=82, label=Data)
mn, mx = plt.xlim()
plt.xlim(mn, mx)
kde_xs = np.linspace(mn, mx, 300)
kde = st.gaussian_kde(x)
plt.plot(kde_xs, kde.pdf(kde_xs), label=PDF)
plt.legend(loc=upper left)
plt.ylabel(Probability)
plt.xlabel(Data)
plt.title(Histogram);

If youre willing to explore other opportunities, there is a shortcut with seaborn:

# !pip install seaborn
import seaborn as sns
sns.displot(x, bins=82, kde=True);

Now back to the OP.

If you have limited number of data points, a bar plot would make more sense to represent your data. Then you may attach labels to x-axis:

x = np.arange(3)
plt.bar(x, height=[1,2,3])
plt.xticks(x, [a,b,c]);

If you havent installed matplotlib yet just try the command.

> pip install matplotlib

Library import

import matplotlib.pyplot as plot

The histogram data:

plot.hist(weightList,density=1, bins=20) 
plot.axis([50, 110, 0, 0.06]) 
#axis([xmin,xmax,ymin,ymax])
plot.xlabel(Weight)
plot.ylabel(Probability)

Display histogram

plot.show()

And the output is like :

How to plot a histogram using Matplotlib in Python with a list of data?

Though the question appears to be demanding plotting a histogram using matplotlib.hist() function, it can arguably be not done using the same as the latter part of the question demands to use the given probabilities as the y-values of bars and given names(strings) as the x-values.

Im assuming a sample list of names corresponding to given probabilities to draw the plot. A simple bar plot serves the purpose here for the given problem. The following code can be used:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
probability = [0.3602150537634409, 0.42028985507246375, 
  0.373117033603708, 0.36813186813186816, 0.32517482517482516, 
  0.4175257731958763, 0.41025641025641024, 0.39408866995073893, 
  0.4143222506393862, 0.34, 0.391025641025641, 0.3130841121495327, 
  0.35398230088495575]
names = [name1, name2, name3, name4, name5, name6, name7, name8, name9,
name10, name11, name12, name13] #sample names
plt.bar(names, probability)
plt.xticks(names)
plt.yticks(probability) #This may be included or excluded as per need
plt.xlabel(Names)
plt.ylabel(Probability)