Matplotlib

<h2 id="comparison-with-matlab">Comparison with MATLAB</h2>
Pyplot is a Matplotlib module that provides a MATLAB-like interface.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:8" href="#fn:8">8</a> Matplotlib is designed to be as usable as MATLAB, with the ability to use Python, and the advantage of being free and <a href="/facts/Open_source/7X9rCdz4">open-source</a>.

<h2 id="plot-types">Plot Types</h2>
Matplotlib supports various types of 2 dimensional and 3 dimensional plots. The support for two dimensional plots is robust. The support for three dimensional plots was added later and while it is good, it is not as robust as 2 dimensional plots.

<h3>Examples</h3>

<h2 id="animations">Animations</h2>
Matplotlib-animation<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:9" href="#fn:9">9</a> capabilities are intended for visualizing how certain data changes. However, one can use the functionality in any way required.
These animations are defined as a function of frame number (or time). In other words, one defines a function that takes a frame number as input and defines/updates the matplotlib-figure based on it.

<blockquote> The time at the beginning of a frame-number since the start of animation can be calculated as - 
 
 
 
 
 time
 
 =
 
 
 
 
 frame-number
 
 −
 1
 
 FPS
 
 
 
 
 {\displaystyle {\text{time}}={\frac {{\text{frame-number}}-1}{\text{FPS}}}}
 
</blockquote>
<h2 id="toolkits">Toolkits</h2>
Several toolkits are available which extend Matplotlib functionality. Some are separate <a href="/facts/Download/qN7fWmyI">downloads</a>, others ship with the Matplotlib <a href="/facts/Source_code/o9J6Jv23">source code</a> but have external dependencies.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:10" href="#fn:10">10</a>

<ul><li><a href="/facts/Web_mapping/NLCTRoQm">Basemap</a>: map plotting with various <a href="/facts/Map_projection/XYxklzIu">map projections</a>, <a href="/facts/Coast/RBD0wxn3">coastlines</a>, and political boundaries<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:11" href="#fn:11">11</a></li>
<li>Cartopy: a mapping library featuring object-oriented map projection definitions, and arbitrary point, line, <a href="/facts/Polygon/yAq7RjPz">polygon</a> and image transformation capabilities.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:12" href="#fn:12">12</a> (Matplotlib v1.2 and above)</li>
<li>Excel tools: utilities for exchanging data with <a href="/facts/Microsoft_Excel/Ezal6G75">Microsoft Excel</a></li>
<li>GTK tools: interface to the GTK library</li>
<li>Qt interface</li>
<li>Mplot3d: 3-D plots</li>
<li>Natgrid: interface to the natgrid library for gridding irregularly spaced data.</li>
<li>tikzplotlib: export to Pgfplots for smooth integration into <a href="/facts/LaTeX/c1lvjF0A">LaTeX</a> documents (formerly known as matplotlib2tikz)<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:13" href="#fn:13">13</a></li>
<li>Seaborn: provides an API on top of Matplotlib that offers sane choices for plot style and color defaults, defines simple high-level functions for common statistical plot types, and integrates with the functionality provided by <a href="/facts/Pandas_(software)/VKkTK8RL">Pandas</a></li>
<li>GeoPandas:<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:14" href="#fn:14">14</a> simplifies geospatial work in Python without needing a spatial database like PostGIS<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:15" href="#fn:15">15</a></li>
<li>Cartopy: streamlines map creation in matplotlib by enabling users to specify a projection and add coastlines with a single line of code<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:16" href="#fn:16">16</a></li></ul>
<h2 id="related-projects">Related projects</h2>
<ul><li>Biggles<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:17" href="#fn:17">17</a></li>
<li>Chaco<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:18" href="#fn:18">18</a></li>
<li><a href="/facts/DISLIN/aRR7gHtQ">DISLIN</a></li>
<li><a href="/facts/GNU_Octave/vVVq5evM">GNU Octave</a></li>
<li><a href="https://github.com/dkogan/gnuplotlib/">gnuplotlib</a> – plotting for numpy with a gnuplot backend</li>
<li><a href="/facts/Gnuplot/fWoweJQJ">Gnuplot</a>-py<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:19" href="#fn:19">19</a></li>
<li><a href="/facts/PLplot/ldTExbD1">PLplot</a> – Python bindings available</li>
<li><a href="/facts/SageMath/5mzh5TlB">SageMath</a> – uses Matplotlib to draw plots</li>
<li>SciPy (modules plt and gplt)</li>
<li><a href="/facts/Plotly/JBJcgC5o">Plotly</a> – for interactive, online Matplotlib and Python graphs</li>
<li>Bokeh<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:20" href="#fn:20">20</a> – Python interactive visualization library that targets modern web browsers for presentation</li></ul>

<h2 id="external-links">External links</h2>

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Matplotlib.

<ul><li><a href="https://matplotlib.org">Official website</a></li></ul>

<h2 id="references">References</h2>

<ol>
<li id="fn:1">"History — Matplotlib 3.9.2 documentation". <a href="https://matplotlib.org/stable/project/history.html" target="_blank">https://matplotlib.org/stable/project/history.html</a> <a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:2">"API Overview". matplotlib.org. <a href="https://matplotlib.org/stable/api/index.html#module-pylab" target="_blank">https://matplotlib.org/stable/api/index.html#module-pylab</a> <a href="#fnref:2" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:3">"Matplotlib github stats". matplotlib.org. <a href="https://matplotlib.org/users/github_stats.html" target="_blank">https://matplotlib.org/users/github_stats.html</a> <a href="#fnref:3" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:4">"Announcing Michael Droettboom as the lead Matplotlib developer". matplotlib.org. Archived from the original on 2020-10-27. Retrieved 2013-04-24. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20201027122844/http://matplotlib.1069221.n5.nabble.com/ANN-Michael-Droettboom-matplotlib-lead-developer-td5037.html" target="_blank">https://web.archive.org/web/20201027122844/http://matplotlib.1069221.n5.nabble.com/ANN-Michael-Droettboom-matplotlib-lead-developer-td5037.html</a> <a href="#fnref:4" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:5">"Matplotlib Lead Developer Explains Why He Can't Fix the Docs—But You Can – NumFOCUS". NumFOCUS. 2017-10-05. Retrieved 2018-04-11. <a href="https://www.numfocus.org/blog/matplotlib-lead-developer-explains-why-he-cant-fix-the-docs-but-you-can" target="_blank">https://www.numfocus.org/blog/matplotlib-lead-developer-explains-why-he-cant-fix-the-docs-but-you-can</a> <a href="#fnref:5" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:6">"Credits – Matplotlib 2.2.2 documentation". matplotlib.org. Retrieved 2018-04-11. <a href="https://matplotlib.org/users/credits.html" target="_blank">https://matplotlib.org/users/credits.html</a> <a href="#fnref:6" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:7">"NumFOCUS Sponsored Projects". NumFOCUS. Retrieved 2021-10-25. <a href="https://numfocus.org/sponsored-projects" target="_blank">https://numfocus.org/sponsored-projects</a> <a href="#fnref:7" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:8">"Matplotlib: Python plotting — Matplotlib 3.2.0 documentation". matplotlib.org. Retrieved 2020-03-14. <a href="https://matplotlib.org/index.html" target="_blank">https://matplotlib.org/index.html</a> <a href="#fnref:8" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:9">"Animations using Matplotlib". matplotlib.org. Retrieved 30 Aug 2024. <a href="https://matplotlib.org/stable/users/explain/animations/animations.html" target="_blank">https://matplotlib.org/stable/users/explain/animations/animations.html</a> <a href="#fnref:9" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:10">"Toolkits". matplotlib.org. <a href="https://matplotlib.org/thirdpartypackages/index.html" target="_blank">https://matplotlib.org/thirdpartypackages/index.html</a> <a href="#fnref:10" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:11">Whitaker, Jeffrey. "The Matplotlib Basemap Toolkit User's Guide (v. 1.0.5)". Matplotlib Basemap Toolkit documentation. Retrieved 24 April 2013. <a href="https://matplotlib.org/basemap/index.html" target="_blank">https://matplotlib.org/basemap/index.html</a> <a href="#fnref:11" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:12">Elson, Philip. "Cartopy". Retrieved 24 April 2013. <a href="http://scitools.org.uk/cartopy/docs/latest/" target="_blank">http://scitools.org.uk/cartopy/docs/latest/</a> <a href="#fnref:12" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:13">Schlömer, Nico. "tikzplotlib". GitHub. Retrieved 7 November 2016. <a href="https://github.com/nschloe/tikzplotlib" target="_blank">https://github.com/nschloe/tikzplotlib</a> <a href="#fnref:13" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:14">"GeoPandas 0.14.4 — GeoPandas 0.14.4+0.g60c9773.dirty documentation". geopandas.org. Retrieved 2024-04-29. <a href="https://geopandas.org/en/stable/" target="_blank">https://geopandas.org/en/stable/</a> <a href="#fnref:14" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:15">Jordahl, Kelsey, geopandas: Geographic pandas extensions, retrieved 2024-04-29 <a href="https://pypi.org/project/geopandas/" target="_blank">https://pypi.org/project/geopandas/</a> <a href="#fnref:15" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:16">"Using cartopy with matplotlib — cartopy 0.15.0 documentation". scitools.org.uk. Retrieved 2024-04-30. <a href="https://scitools.org.uk/cartopy/docs/v0.15/matplotlib/intro.html" target="_blank">https://scitools.org.uk/cartopy/docs/v0.15/matplotlib/intro.html</a> <a href="#fnref:16" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:17">"Bigglessimple, elegant python plotting". biggles.sourceforge.net. Retrieved 24 November 2010. <a href="http://biggles.sourceforge.net/" target="_blank">http://biggles.sourceforge.net/</a> <a href="#fnref:17" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:18">"Chaco". code.enthought.com. <a href="http://docs.enthought.com/chaco/" target="_blank">http://docs.enthought.com/chaco/</a> <a href="#fnref:18" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:19">"Gnuplot.py on". gnuplot-py.sourceforge.net. Retrieved 24 November 2010. <a href="http://gnuplot-py.sourceforge.net/" target="_blank">http://gnuplot-py.sourceforge.net/</a> <a href="#fnref:19" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:20">"Bokeh 2.0.0 Documentation". docs.bokeh.org. Retrieved 2020-03-14. <a href="https://docs.bokeh.org/en/latest/" target="_blank">https://docs.bokeh.org/en/latest/</a> <a href="#fnref:20" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
</ol>

Matplotlib open-in-new

Matplotlib