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Getting Started with Python and MatPlotLib

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Introduction

Let us say you have some data that you have generated, whether it is from an experiment or a simulation, and you want to visualize it. How would you go about that? You could probably piece together an image pixel by pixel to create something, but that sounds like a lot of work. Thankfully, most of that work has been done for you. There is a python package called 'MatPlotLib' that lays down the groundwork to generate stunning graphics, and even animations.

Python is a programming language this is quick to learn and easy to use. Its use in scientific computing has been expanding rapidly. It has many packages that you can install and use, such as MatPlotLib. But there are a plethora of other packages available including ones doing machine learning, quantum computing, and many more!

Packages

In this series of workshops, we will focus on the MatPlotLib package and its uses. It was based off of MATLAB's plotting system, but implemented in a more intuitive way. The other package we will use along the way is NumPy: A C-based numeric library to perform quick mathematical operations.

Installation

If you do not have python already installed on your computer, please download it here: Download Python. Once python is downloaded and installed, please open a terminal (or PowerShell if you are on Windows) and run: 

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python --version
To ensure it is installed correctly.

After installing python and checking that it is installed, we need to install MatPlotLib. There are better ways to do this (such as if you are using one of RCAC's clusters), but for now we will do the simple but wrong way. In a terminal, please run the command: 

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pip install matplotlib
This will go through and install the MatPlotLib package as well as any dependencies it has (which includes NumPy).

Writing Python Code

There are two main ways to write code in Python:

  • Interactively
  • Scripting

In this workshop, we will write scripts and run those scripts. The script is essentially a list of commands you want the computer to run. You could do the same thing interactively and write the program line-by-line every time, but scripts introduce reproducibility to your workflow.

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