How to do a scatter plot with empty circles in Python?

From the documentation for scatter:

Optional kwargs control the Collection properties; in particular:

    edgecolors:
        The string ‘none’ to plot faces with no outlines
    facecolors:
        The string ‘none’ to plot unfilled outlines

Try the following:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt 
import numpy as np 

x = np.random.randn(60) 
y = np.random.randn(60)

plt.scatter(x, y, s=80, facecolors="none", edgecolors="r")
plt.show()

Note: For other types of plots see this post on the use of markeredgecolor and markerfacecolor.