We installed matplotlib and IPython in Chapter 1, Getting Started with Python Libraries. You can go back to that chapter if you need to refresh your memory. The procedural Matlab-like matplotlib API is considered by many as simpler to use than the object-oriented API, so we will demonstrate this procedural API first. To create a very basic plot in matplotlib, we need to invoke the plot() function in the matplotlib.pyplot subpackage. This function produces a two-dimensional plot for a single list or multiple lists of points with known x and y coordinates.
Optionally, we can pass a format parameter, for instance, to specify a dashed line style. The list of format options and parameters for the plot() function is pretty long, but easy to look up with the following commands (after you have imported the matplotlib.pyplot library):
In [1]: help(plot)
In this example, we will plot two lines--one with a solid line style (the default) and the other with a dashed line style.
The...