Welcome! A plot is a picture of your data that helps you see patterns a table of numbers can't show. To create plots in Python, we use a powerful library called Matplotlib.

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What makes a visual pattern easier to recognize than a numerical one?

To get started, we need to import the library. Just as we use import pandas as pd, the standard convention for Matplotlib's plotting interface is:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

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From now on, we'll use plt to refer to Matplotlib, sound good?

Every plot begins with a Figure and Axes. Think of the Figure as the entire canvas or window. The Axes is the specific area inside the canvas where your data will actually be plotted.

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What is the relationship between a picture frame and the photo inside it?

We create the Figure and Axes with one simple command:

fig, ax = plt.subplots()

This creates a blank canvas (fig) and a plotting area (ax) for us to work with. ax is the object we'll use to create our bars, lines, and points.