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Matplotlib

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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] Edit this on Wikidata / 13 August 2024; 3 months ago (13 August 2024)
Repository
Written inPython
Engine Cairo, Anti-Grain Geometry
Operating systemCross-platform
TypePlotting
LicenseMatplotlib license
Websitematplotlib.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.

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

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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

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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

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Animations

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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

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

  • Basemap: map plotting with various map projections, coastlines, and political boundaries[13]
  • Cartopy: a mapping library featuring object-oriented map projection definitions, and arbitrary point, line, polygon and image transformation capabilities.[14] (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)[15]
  • 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:[16] simplifies geospatial work in Python without needing a spatial database like PostGIS[17]
  • Cartopy: streamlines map creation in matplotlib by enabling users to specify a projection and add coastlines with a single line of code[18]
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  • Biggles[19]
  • Chaco[20]
  • DISLIN
  • GNU Octave
  • gnuplotlib – plotting for numpy with a gnuplot backend
  • Gnuplot-py[21]
  • PLplot – Python bindings available
  • SageMath – uses Matplotlib to draw plots
  • SciPy (modules plt and gplt)
  • Plotly – for interactive, online Matplotlib and Python graphs
  • Bokeh[22] – Python interactive visualization library that targets modern web browsers for presentation

References

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  1. ^ "Copyright Policy".
  2. ^ "Release 3.9.2". 13 August 2024. Retrieved 22 August 2024.
  3. ^ https://matplotlib.org/stable/project/history.html
  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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