Matplotlib

Last updated
Matplotlib
Original author(s) John D. Hunter
Developer(s) Michael Droettboom, et al.
Initial release2003;21 years ago (2003) [1]
Stable release
3.9.2 [2]   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg / 13 August 2024;3 months ago (13 August 2024)
Repository
Written in Python
Engine Cairo, Anti-Grain Geometry
Operating system Cross-platform
Type Plotting
License Matplotlib license
Website matplotlib.org

Matplotlib (portmanteau of MATLAB, plot, and library [3] ) 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. [4] SciPy makes use of Matplotlib.

Contents

Matplotlib was originally written by John D. Hunter. Since then it has had an active development community [5] 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 [6] and was further joined by Thomas Caswell. [7] [8] Matplotlib is a NumFOCUS fiscally sponsored project. [9]

Comparison with MATLAB

Pyplot is a Matplotlib module that provides a MATLAB-like interface. [10] Matplotlib is designed to be as usable as MATLAB, with the ability to use Python, and the advantage of being free and open-source.

Plot Types

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.

Examples

Animations

Matplotlib-animation [11] 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.

The time at the beginning of a frame-number since the start of animation can be calculated as -

Toolkits

Several toolkits are available which extend Matplotlib functionality. Some are separate downloads, others ship with the Matplotlib source code but have external dependencies. [12]

Related Research Articles

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John D. Hunter was an American neurobiologist and the original author of Matplotlib.

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References

  1. ↑ "Copyright Policy".
  2. ↑ "Release 3.9.2". 13 August 2024. Retrieved 22 August 2024.
  3. ↑ "History — Matplotlib 3.9.2 documentation".
  4. ↑ "API Overview". matplotlib.org.
  5. ↑ "Matplotlib github stats". matplotlib.org.
  6. ↑ "Announcing Michael Droettboom as the lead Matplotlib developer". matplotlib.org. Archived from the original on 2020-10-27. Retrieved 2013-04-24.
  7. ↑ "Matplotlib Lead Developer Explains Why He Can't Fix the Docs—But You Can – NumFOCUS". NumFOCUS. 2017-10-05. Retrieved 2018-04-11.
  8. ↑ "Credits – Matplotlib 2.2.2 documentation". matplotlib.org. Retrieved 2018-04-11.
  9. ↑ "NumFOCUS Sponsored Projects". NumFOCUS. Retrieved 2021-10-25.
  10. ↑ "Matplotlib: Python plotting — Matplotlib 3.2.0 documentation". matplotlib.org. Retrieved 2020-03-14.
  11. ↑ "Animations using Matplotlib". matplotlib.org. Retrieved 30 Aug 2024.
  12. ↑ "Toolkits". matplotlib.org.
  13. ↑ Whitaker, Jeffrey. "The Matplotlib Basemap Toolkit User's Guide (v. 1.0.5)". Matplotlib Basemap Toolkit documentation. Retrieved 24 April 2013.
  14. ↑ Elson, Philip. "Cartopy" . Retrieved 24 April 2013.
  15. ↑ Schlömer, Nico. "tikzplotlib". GitHub . Retrieved 7 November 2016.
  16. ↑ "GeoPandas 0.14.4 — GeoPandas 0.14.4+0.g60c9773.dirty documentation". geopandas.org. Retrieved 2024-04-29.
  17. ↑ Jordahl, Kelsey, geopandas: Geographic pandas extensions , retrieved 2024-04-29
  18. ↑ "Using cartopy with matplotlib — cartopy 0.15.0 documentation". scitools.org.uk. Retrieved 2024-04-30.
  19. ↑ "Bigglessimple, elegant python plotting". biggles.sourceforge.net. Retrieved 24 November 2010.
  20. ↑ "Chaco". code.enthought.com.
  21. ↑ "Gnuplot.py on". gnuplot-py.sourceforge.net. Retrieved 24 November 2010.
  22. ↑ "Bokeh 2.0.0 Documentation". docs.bokeh.org. Retrieved 2020-03-14.
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