All work in scientific computing requires the display of graphical representations of data. Matplotlib is a full-fledged library for scientific and data plots.

Matplotlib can be used in two ways:

• Using functions in the pyplot module, which adopts a state-machine approach to plotting, where graphs are built step by step, with each command adding elements to the plot
• Using Matplotlib Artist objects to add elements to an Axes object directly

Most of this chapter concentrates on pyplot, which is the fastest way to build a graph from scratch.