Matplotlib Best Practices

Expert guidelines for Matplotlib development, focusing on data visualization, plotting, and creating publication-quality figures.

Code Style and Structure

• Write concise, technical Python code with accurate Matplotlib examples
• Create informative and visually appealing plots with proper labels, titles, and legends
• Use the object-oriented API for complex figures, pyplot for quick plots
• Follow PEP 8 style guidelines
• Consider color-blindness accessibility in all visualizations

API Approaches

Object-Oriented Interface (Recommended)

• Use fig, ax = plt.subplots() for explicit control
• Preferred for complex figures and production code
• Methods are called on axes objects: ax.plot(), ax.set_xlabel()