Welcome aboard to the journey of creating good data visuals. In this era of exploding big data, we are probably well aware of the importance of data analytics. Developers are keen to join the data mining game, and build tools to collect and model all kinds of data. Even for non-data analysts, information such as performance test results and user feedback is often paramount in improving the software being developed. While strong statistical skills surely set the foundation of successful software development and data analysis, good storytelling is crucial even for the best data crunching results. The quality of graphical data representation often determines whether or not you can extract useful information during exploratory data analysis and get the message across during the presentation.

Matplotlib is a versatile and robust Python plotting package; it provides clean and easy ways to produce various quality data graphics and offers huge flexibility for customization.

In this chapter, we will introduce Matplotlib as follows: what it does, why you would want to use it, and how to get started. Here are the topics we will cover:

• What is Matplotlib?
• Merits of Matplotlib
• What's new in Matplotlib?
• Matplotlib websites and online documentation.
• Output formats and backends.
• Setting up Matplotlib.