To create a bar graph, use plt.bar().
plt.bar() requires 2 arguments, 'x' and 'height'. 'x' refers to the x-coordinates of the bars and 'height' refers to the heights of the bars. 

The following is a simple example of a bar graph.

matplotlib also allows you to create horizontal bar charts, stacked bar charts, grouped bar charts and so on.

Bar Graphs

To create a line graph, use ``` plt.plot() ```
plt.plot() does not require any arguments, and thus will show a blank graph if used without arguments. 
Commonly, they are given the inputs horizontal / vertical coordinates of the data points and perhaps a third argument to specify the format.
```
x = [1, 2, 3]
y = np.array([[1, 2], [3, 4], [5, 6]])
plt.plot(x, y)
```
results in the graph

Line Graphs

To create a pie chart, use ```plt.pie()```
plt.pie() requires 1 argument, 'x', which is the wedge sizes, and comes in the form of arrays. The wedges are plotted counterclockwise, starting from the x-axis. 

```
plt.pie([20, 90, 80, 11])
```
results in the graph

Pie Charts

To create a histogram, use ```plt.hist()```
plt.hist() requires one argument, 'x', which represents the input values and is usually an array or a sequence of arrays. With a second input parameter, we can control the bins by giving it an integer or an array. 
```plt.hist(np.random.randn(1000), 5)``` produces the graph in the image. 

It is also possible to animate a histogram after including 
``` import matplotlib.animation as animation``` and creating a function to animate the bars.

Histograms

The following are the most common types of graphs used to represent data. 
- Bar Graphs
- Line Graphs
- Pie Charts
- Histograms

University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

After importing the pyplot and numpy module: 
``` python
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
```
We can create a figure with a single axes, and then plot data onto the axes
```python
fig, ax = plt.subplots()
ax.plot([1,2,3,4],[4,3,2,1])
```
The plotting functions expect a numpy array or a numpy masked array as input

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