Figures and Axes

Matplotlib is the foundational plotting library for Python. To use it well you must understand its two-level model: the Figure and the Axes.

A Figure is the overall window or page that everything is drawn on. An Axes is a single plot inside that figure, with its own x and y coordinate system.

• One figure can hold many axes
• Each axes is where the data actually lives

Three terms are easy to confuse:

• Figure the whole image, the container
• Axes a single plotting region (note the spelling, it is not the plural of axis)
• Axis the x-axis or y-axis number line inside an axes

So a figure contains axes, and each axes contains two (or three) axis objects.