Matplotlib is a plotting library for the Python programming language and its numerical mathematics extension NumPy. It provides an object-oriented API for embedding plots into applications using general-purpose GUI toolkits like Tkinter, wxPython, Qt, or GTK. There is also a procedural "pylab" interface based on a state machine (like OpenGL), designed to closely resemble that of MATLAB, though its use is discouraged.[3] SciPy makes use of Matplotlib.
![]() | |
![]() Screenshot of Matplotlib plots and code | |
Original author(s) | John D. Hunter |
---|---|
Developer(s) | Michael Droettboom, et al. |
Initial release | 2003[1] |
Stable release | 3.9.0[2] ![]() |
Repository | |
Written in | Python |
Engine | Cairo, Anti-Grain Geometry |
Operating system | Cross-platform |
Type | Plotting |
License | Matplotlib license |
Website | matplotlib |
Matplotlib was originally written by John D. Hunter. Since then it has had an active development community[4] and is distributed under a BSD-style license. Michael Droettboom was nominated as matplotlib's lead developer shortly before John Hunter's death in August 2012[5] and was further joined by Thomas Caswell.[6][7] Matplotlib is a NumFOCUS fiscally sponsored project.[8]
Comparison with MATLAB
Pyplot is a Matplotlib module that provides a MATLAB-like interface.[9] Matplotlib is designed to be as usable as MATLAB, with the ability to use Python, and the advantage of being free and open-source.[citation needed]
Examples
- Line plot
- Histogram
- Scatter plot
- 3D plot
- Image plot
- Contour plot
- Scatter plot
- Polar plot
- Line plot
- 3-D plot
- Image plot
Toolkits
Several toolkits are available which extend Matplotlib functionality. Some are separate downloads, others ship with the Matplotlib source code but have external dependencies.[10]
- Basemap: map plotting with various map projections, coastlines, and political boundaries[11]
- Cartopy: a mapping library featuring object-oriented map projection definitions, and arbitrary point, line, polygon and image transformation capabilities.[12] (Matplotlib v1.2 and above)
- Excel tools: utilities for exchanging data with Microsoft Excel
- GTK tools: interface to the GTK library
- Qt interface
- Mplot3d: 3-D plots
- Natgrid: interface to the natgrid library for gridding irregularly spaced data.
- tikzplotlib: export to Pgfplots for smooth integration into LaTeX documents (formerly known as matplotlib2tikz)[13]
- 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 Pandas
- GeoPandas:[14] simplifies geospatial work in Python without needing a spatial database like PostGIS[15]
- Cartopy: streamlines map creation in matplotlib by enabling users to specify a projection and add coastlines with a single line of code[16]
Related projects
- Biggles[17]
- Chaco[18]
- DISLIN
- GNU Octave
- gnuplotlib – plotting for numpy with a gnuplot backend
- Gnuplot-py[19]
- PLplot – Python bindings available
- SageMath – uses
Matplotlib
to draw plots - SciPy (modules
plt
andgplt
) - Plotly – for interactive, online Matplotlib and Python graphs
- Bokeh[20] – Python interactive visualization library that targets modern web browsers for presentation
References
External links
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4a/Commons-logo.svg/30px-Commons-logo.svg.png)