How do I get multiple subplots in matplotlib?

Question

I am a little confused about how this code works:

fig, axes = plt.subplots(nrows=2, ncols=2)
plt.show()

How does the fig, axes work in this

Answer 1

You might be interested in the fact that as of matplotlib version 2.1 the second code from the question works fine as well.

From the change log:

Figure class now has subplots method The Figure class now has a subplots() method which behaves the same as pyplot.subplots() but on an existing figure.

Example:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

fig = plt.figure()
axes = fig.subplots(nrows=2, ncols=2)

plt.show()