Matplotlib is one of the most-used and powerful visualization libraries for python. Nevertheless, there has been and still is some confusion on how use it properly. This has a number of reasons ranging from an evolution of the API and lack of good documentation to the complexity that comes with the large feature set and flexibility. But these issues can be overcome.

This tutorial will explain the main concepts and intended usage patterns of matplotlib. Knowing these, lets you effectively use high-level functions for most of the cases. But you will be able to go into the details if you need to fine-tune certain aspects of the plot. We'll also touch some nowadays discouraged ways of working from the past (you should know what not to do - even though that's still found in lots of examples on the web) and we may get a glimpse into the future.