Creating simple plots with Python

Making plots with Python is easy provided you've downloaded the matplotlib plotting library. You will also probably need Numpy for the numerical routines it provides.

The following code example will produce two interactive figures. The first one demonstrates how to overplot curves, the second one shows how to get two separate plots on the figure.

#First, import the libraries as plt and np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np

#Define a function
def f(t):
return np.exp(-t)*np.cos(2*np.pi*t)

# Set up two arrays
t = np.arange(0.0, 5.0, 0.1)
t2 = np.arange(0.0, 5.0, 0.02)

#make single plot with overplots
plt.plot(t, f(t), 'g^', t, f(t*t), 'r--', t, f(t*t*t), 'bs')
plt.plot(t2, f(t2), 'g', t2, f(t2*t2), 'r', t2, f(t2*t2*t2), 'b')

# add labels
plt.ylabel('y values')
plt.xlabel('x values')

# Example of how to get math characters.
# Not that the format is the same as TeX markup but you don't need to have
# TeX installed since matplotlib has it's own parser, layout engine and fonts.
# For example, to print the greek letter sigma as the x title, use:
# plt.xlabel(r'$\sigma$')
plt.title(r'$\Delta\chi^2$')

# add some text on the plot at location 2, 0.6
plt.text(2, 0.6, r'$\alpha_i=100,\ \Delta\chi^2=15$')

# use gridmarks
plt.grid(True)

#make second plot with 2 subplots
plt.figure(2)

#first subplot
plt.subplot(211)
plt.plot(t, f(t), 'bo', t2, f(t2), 'k')
plt.ylabel('y values')
plt.xlabel('x values')
plt.title('blah')
plt.grid(True)

#second subplot
plt.subplot(212)
plt.plot(t2,np.cos(2*np.pi*t2), 'r--')
plt.ylabel('y2 Values')
plt.xlabel('x2 values')
plt.grid(True)

# realise plot
plt.show()

This snippet will produce the following figures: