Basic knowledge of Python is enough to understand the content in this book, except for Chapters 9, Developing Interactive Plots and Chapter 10, Embedding Plots in a Graphical User Interface. These two chapters deal with interactive plotting and embedded applications that need medium-level Python programming experience.

Many Python distributions automatically include Matplotlib, along with all its dependencies. If you have not installed any standard Python distributions, you can follow the installation process at https://matplotlib.org/users/installing.html to install Matplotlib and its associated dependencies.

You can download the example code files for this book from your account at www.packt.com. If you purchased this book elsewhere, you can visit www.packt.com/support and register to have the files emailed directly to you.

You can download the code files by following these steps:

1. Log in or register at www.packt.com.
2. Select the SUPPORT tab.
3. Click on Code Downloads & Errata.
4. Enter the name of the book in the Search box and follow the onscreen instructions.

Once the file is downloaded, please make sure that you unzip or extract the folder using the latest version of:

• WinRAR/7-Zip for Windows
• Zipeg/iZip/UnRarX for Mac
• 7-Zip/PeaZip for Linux

The code bundle for the book is also hosted on GitHub at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Matplotlib-3.0-Cookbook. In case there's an update to the code, it will be updated on the existing GitHub repository.

We also have other code bundles from our rich catalog of books and videos available at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/. Check them out!

We also provide a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. You can download it here: https://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/9781789135718_ColorImages.pdf.

There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

CodeInText: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: "We will follow the order of .txt, .csv, and .xlsx files, in three separate sections."

A block of code is set as follows:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import pandas as pd
import numpy as np
from matplotlib import cm

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see onscreen. For example, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in the text like this. Here is an example: "When you run the program and click Next and Next, you will see the following three figures, representing each of the clusters, as shown in the header of each figure."