Updating a matplotlib bar graph?

Question

I have a bar graph which retrieves its y values from a dict. Instead of showing several graphs with all the different values and me having to close every single one, I need

Answer 1

I've simplified the above excellent solution to its essentials, with more details at my blogpost:

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

numBins = 100
numEvents = 100000

file = 'datafile_100bins_100000events.histogram'
histogramSeries = np.loadtext(file)

fig, ax = plt.subplots()
rects = ax.bar(range(numBins), np.ones(numBins)*40)  # 40 is upper bound of y-axis 

for i in range(numEvents):
    for rect,h in zip(rects,histogramSeries[i,:]):
        rect.set_height(h)
    fig.canvas.draw()
    plt.pause(0.001)