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Subplots and Figure Size

You can’t draw straight onto a blank Figure — McKinney is explicit about this: “You can’t make a plot with a blank figure. You have to create one or more subplots.” The convenient shortcut plt.subplots(nrows, ncols)plt.subplots(nrows, ncols) creates the figure and a NumPy array of Axes in one call, so you can index into it like axes[0, 1]axes[0, 1] for “row 0, column 1.”

diagram Building a subplot grid mermaid
plt.subplots(rows, cols) creates one Figure containing a grid of independent Axes you can index into.

Subplots

2x2 subplots
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
 
fig, axes = plt.subplots(2, 2, figsize=(10, 6))
 
axes[0, 0].plot([1, 2, 3], [1, 4, 9])
axes[0, 0].set_title("Line")
 
axes[0, 1].bar(["A", "B", "C"], [5, 2, 7])
axes[0, 1].set_title("Bar")
 
axes[1, 0].hist([1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 4], bins=4, edgecolor="black")
axes[1, 0].set_title("Histogram")
 
axes[1, 1].scatter([1, 2, 3, 4], [10, 11, 9, 12])
axes[1, 1].set_title("Scatter")
 
fig.suptitle("Mini dashboard")
plt.tight_layout()
plt.show()
2x2 subplots
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
 
fig, axes = plt.subplots(2, 2, figsize=(10, 6))
 
axes[0, 0].plot([1, 2, 3], [1, 4, 9])
axes[0, 0].set_title("Line")
 
axes[0, 1].bar(["A", "B", "C"], [5, 2, 7])
axes[0, 1].set_title("Bar")
 
axes[1, 0].hist([1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 4], bins=4, edgecolor="black")
axes[1, 0].set_title("Histogram")
 
axes[1, 1].scatter([1, 2, 3, 4], [10, 11, 9, 12])
axes[1, 1].set_title("Scatter")
 
fig.suptitle("Mini dashboard")
plt.tight_layout()
plt.show()

Figure size rules

  • Use larger figures for long labels and multiple subplots.
  • Smaller is fine for single simple plots.

Visualize it

A FigureFigure is just the outer frame — each mini panel inside is its own independent AxesAxes with its own data, ticks, and title:

sketch A figure made of a grid of Axes p5.js
plt.subplots(2, 2) builds one Figure holding four independent Axes, each with its own chart.

Tip

plt.tight_layout()plt.tight_layout() prevents label overlaps in most cases.

Next

Continue to Axis Labels and Titles to make every one of those panels self-explanatory.

🧪 Try It Yourself

Exercise 1 – Create a grid of axes

Exercise 2 – Index into the grid

Exercise 3 – Share an axis across subplots

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