Incorrect Output of ListPlot using PlotMarkers with text

Question

I am not sure what I am doing wrong in my code. I just want illustrate four columns consisted of different numbers as plot markers.

ListPlot[{{1, 2, 3, 4}, {2, 1}, {2, 2}, {3, 1}, {3, 2}, {4, 1}, {4, 2}},
PlotMarkers -> {"\[Pi]", "8", "9", "10", "2", "5", "3", "4", "1", 
"\!\(\*SqrtBox[\(2\)]\)"}, Ticks -> None, AxesLabel -> {"Number of 
columns", "Size of the columns"}]

But I get this plot output:

Any help or a hint will be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

UPDATE: I have figured out the wrong format of my code thanks to @Graumagier.

But, I have searched in google how to change the scale of the x-axis because automatically in the plot the coordinates with $x=1$ are very close to the y-axis. Is there any way to adjust that?

Answer 1

General information about list formats with ListPlot

You have to make sure to use the right format for the lists of points. ListPlot takes three formats, as you can see in the function's documentation:

Here you provide multiple y values which get assigned consecutive x values automatically by ListPlot. All the points are treated as belonging to the same dataset:

{y1, y2, …}

Here you provide multiple points with explicit x and y values. Each point is a list with two coordinates, and they get treated as points of the same dataset:

{{x1, y1}, {x2, y2}, …}

Here you provide multiple lists with one or more points each. Each list of lists get treated as a separate dataset:

{{{x11, y11}, {x12, y12}}, {{x21, y21}, {x22, y22}}, …}

Concerning your specific case

The distinction between the last two is important in your case, because ListPlot loops over datasets in order to decide which PlotMarkers to assign to which points.

Here's an example of mixed list formats in order to plot (1) a number of y values with implicit x coordinates, (2) a single point with explicit x and y coordinates and (3) a list of two points, each with explicit x and y coordinates. Each of these datasets gets a separate value in PlotMarkers:

ListPlot[
  {
    {1, 2, 3, 4}, 
    {{2, 1}},
    {{3, 2}, {3, 4}}
  },
  PlotMarkers -> {"1", Sqrt[2], "3"}
]