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Product typeBook
Published inJun 2015
Reading LevelIntermediate
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ISBN-139781783987542
Edition1st Edition
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Authors (2):
Duncan M. McGreggor
Duncan M. McGreggor
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Duncan M. McGreggor

Duncan M. McGreggor, having programmed with GOTOs in the 1980s, has made up for that through community service by making open source contributions for more than 20 years. He has spent a major part of the past 10 years dealing with distributed and scientific computing (in languages ranging from Python, Common Lisp, and Julia to Clojure and Lisp Flavored Erlang). In the 1990s, after serving as a linguist in the US Army, he spent considerable time working on projects related to MATLAB and Mathematica, which was a part of his physics and maths studies at the university. Since the mid 2000s, matplotlib and NumPy have figured prominently in many of the interesting problems that he has solved for his customers. With the most recent addition of the IPython Notebook, matplotlib and the suite of the Python scientific computing libraries remain some of his most important professional tools.
Read more about Duncan M. McGreggor

Duncan M McGreggor
Duncan M McGreggor
author image
Duncan M McGreggor

Duncan M. McGreggor, having programmed with GOTOs in the 1980s, has made up for that through community service by making open source contributions for more than 20 years. He has spent a major part of the past 10 years dealing with distributed and scientific computing (in languages ranging from Python, Common Lisp, and Julia to Clojure and Lisp Flavored Erlang). In the 1990s, after serving as a linguist in the US Army, he spent considerable time working on projects related to MATLAB and Mathematica, which was a part of his physics and maths studies at the university. Since the mid 2000s, matplotlib and NumPy have figured prominently in many of the interesting problems that he has solved for his customers. With the most recent addition of the IPython Notebook, matplotlib and the suite of the Python scientific computing libraries remain some of his most important professional tools.
Read more about Duncan M McGreggor

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The procedural pylab API


The pylab API is a procedural interface to matplotlib's underlying object-oriented Python API. As mentioned in the previous chapter and stated in the matplotlib FAQ, the pylab module has been deprecated. The pyplot module is the preferred API for scripting. The original vision of pylab—to provide MATLAB users a nearly one-to-one mapping of the software they knew with that of an open source platform—has been accomplished. In the 12 years since its inception, matplotlib has become a household name in scientific computing circles, and as a result the need for pylab has decreased greatly.

The drawbacks of pylab include the following:

  • It hides the workings (and thus, the deeper knowledge) of matplotlib, thus preventing the natural discovery of deeper feature sets that are available to the user through matplotlib objects.

  • The additional development and maintenance of pylab are a burden for the matplotlib team in its continued efforts to provide the MATLAB functionality that...

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Mastering matplotlib
Published in: Jun 2015Publisher: ISBN-13: 9781783987542

Authors (2)

author image
Duncan M. McGreggor

Duncan M. McGreggor, having programmed with GOTOs in the 1980s, has made up for that through community service by making open source contributions for more than 20 years. He has spent a major part of the past 10 years dealing with distributed and scientific computing (in languages ranging from Python, Common Lisp, and Julia to Clojure and Lisp Flavored Erlang). In the 1990s, after serving as a linguist in the US Army, he spent considerable time working on projects related to MATLAB and Mathematica, which was a part of his physics and maths studies at the university. Since the mid 2000s, matplotlib and NumPy have figured prominently in many of the interesting problems that he has solved for his customers. With the most recent addition of the IPython Notebook, matplotlib and the suite of the Python scientific computing libraries remain some of his most important professional tools.
Read more about Duncan M. McGreggor

author image
Duncan M McGreggor

Duncan M. McGreggor, having programmed with GOTOs in the 1980s, has made up for that through community service by making open source contributions for more than 20 years. He has spent a major part of the past 10 years dealing with distributed and scientific computing (in languages ranging from Python, Common Lisp, and Julia to Clojure and Lisp Flavored Erlang). In the 1990s, after serving as a linguist in the US Army, he spent considerable time working on projects related to MATLAB and Mathematica, which was a part of his physics and maths studies at the university. Since the mid 2000s, matplotlib and NumPy have figured prominently in many of the interesting problems that he has solved for his customers. With the most recent addition of the IPython Notebook, matplotlib and the suite of the Python scientific computing libraries remain some of his most important professional tools.
Read more about Duncan M McGreggor