Plotting Milestone

Because our project involves computational geometry, most of the computations are about geometric objects such as points, lines, triangles, and polygons. The computer will represent all such quantities as numbers, but to understand the results, and especially to catch our programming mistakes, we need to be able to draw pictures. It takes some time to understand the rules for turning tables of numbers into pictures, and a little more time to understand how to make those pictures vivid and effective.

Topics we will need to learn include:

• importing matplotlib.pyplot;
• using the plot command;
• using the subplot() command to place several plots onto separate areas of a single page;
• using the hold command to place several plots onto the same area of a single page;
• modifying the properties of lines and markers in the plot command.
• specifying the title, x and y labels, adding a background grid.
• saving a plot into a graphics file with savefig();