In the last few weeks, I had to visualize some data from time to time. And for me, it turned out that the Python library Matplotlib is one of the best tools to do some quick plots. I cannot imagine that I have never installed Python on the Windows partition of my laptop, but only on my Linux partition. And I can really recommend to have Python and Matplotlib installed on every device, so that you have these tools at hand whenever you need to visualize some data. In this short post, I would like to write down the few simple steps you should do.
Getting started
If not available already, please install Python. There are many ways to do it, such as from the official Python Software Foundation, or via your package manager on Ubuntu:
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$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install python
Next, install Matplotlib using pip package manager:
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$ pip install matplotlib
Then run a Python terminal, import matplotlib.pyplot and make plot with just a few lines of code:
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import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
plt.plot([8,4,2,1,0,1,2,4,8])
plt.show()
You will then see the results in an interactive window:
Example plot with Matplotlib
You can also perform multiple plt.plot() calls before showing the graphics, in order to stack multiple lines in a single diagram. And of course, the library allows you to do much more. To get started, check out this tutorial.