Introduction to Matplotlib

What is Matplotlib?

Matplotlib is the core plotting library in Python.

Flexible and powerful
Works everywhere (scripts, notebooks)
Backbone for many libraries (including Seaborn)

Two common ways to plot

1) Pyplot (quick)

pyplot quick

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
 
plt.plot([1, 2, 3], [3, 2, 5])
plt.title("Quick plot")
plt.show()

pyplot quick

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
 
plt.plot([1, 2, 3], [3, 2, 5])
plt.title("Quick plot")
plt.show()

2) Object-oriented API (recommended)

OO API

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
 
fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(7, 4))
ax.plot([1, 2, 3], [3, 2, 5])
ax.set_title("OO plot")
ax.set_xlabel("x")
ax.set_ylabel("y")
plt.show()

OO API

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
 
fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(7, 4))
ax.plot([1, 2, 3], [3, 2, 5])
ax.set_title("OO plot")
ax.set_xlabel("x")
ax.set_ylabel("y")
plt.show()

Key terms

Figure: the whole canvas
Axes: the plotting area
Artist: everything drawn on the figure

In this phase, we’ll focus on practical charts you need for analytics.

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