Introduction

Visualization is a central theme of this book. We create graphics in most recipes because that's the most efficient way to communicate quantitative information. In most cases, we use matplotlib to create plots. In this chapter, we will see more advanced visualization features in Python.

First, we will see a few packages that let us improve the default styling of matplotlib figures and the MATLAB-like pyplot interface. There are other high-level visualization programming interfaces that can be more convenient in some situations.

Also, the Web platform is getting closer and closer to Python. The IPython notebook is a good example of this trend. In this chapter, we will see a few techniques and libraries to create interactive Web visualizations in Python. These techniques will let us combine the power of Python for data analysis and the power of the Web for interactivity.

Finally, we will introduce Vispy, a new high-performance interactive visualization library for big data.