Using Matplotlib styles

Recent versions of Matplotlib have significantly improved the default style of its figures. Today, Matplotlib comes with a set of high-quality predefined styles along with a styling system that lets one customize all aspects of these styles.

How to do it...

1. Let's import the libraries:

   >>> import numpy as np
       import matplotlib as mpl
       import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
       %matplotlib inline

2. Let's see a list of all available styles:

   >>> sorted(mpl.style.available)
   ['bmh',
    'classic',
    'dark_background',
    'fivethirtyeight',
    'ggplot',
    'grayscale',
    'mycustomstyle',
    'seaborn',
    ...
    'seaborn-whitegrid']

3. We create a plot:

   >>> def doplot():
           fig, ax = plt.subplots(1, 1, figsize=(5, 5))
           t = np.linspace(-2 * np.pi, 2 * np.pi, 1000)
           x = np.linspace(0, 14, 100)
           for i in range(1, 7):
               ax.plot(x, np.sin(x + i * .5) * (7 - i))
           return ax

4. We can set a style with mpl.style.use(). All subsequent plots will...