Matplotlib

Overview

Matplotlib is Python's foundational visualization library for creating static, animated, and interactive plots. This skill provides guidance on using matplotlib effectively, covering both the pyplot interface (MATLAB-style) and the object-oriented API (Figure/Axes), along with best practices for creating publication-quality visualizations.

When to Use This Skill

This skill should be used when:

• Creating any type of plot or chart (line, scatter, bar, histogram, heatmap, contour, etc.)
• Generating scientific or statistical visualizations
• Customizing plot appearance (colors, styles, labels, legends)
• Creating multi-panel figures with subplots
• Exporting visualizations to various formats (PNG, PDF, SVG, etc.)
• Building interactive plots or animations
• Working with 3D visualizations
• Integrating plots into Jupyter notebooks or GUI applications

Setup

For project work, install Matplotlib with uv:

uv add matplotlib

For notebook interactivity:

uv add matplotlib ipympl

Then enable the widget backend in Jupyter with %matplotlib widget or %matplotlib ipympl.

Matplotlib 3.10 requires Python 3.10+ and NumPy 1.23+. Non…