// the find
rougier/scientific-visualization-book
An open access book on scientific visualization using python and matplotlib
A full open-access book on scientific visualization with Matplotlib, written by Nicolas Rougier. Covers coordinate systems, color theory, typography, layout, animation, and 3D — not as a tutorial series but as a proper book with progression. Aimed at researchers and data scientists who want publication-quality figures, not just working plots.
The code-to-figure correspondence is tight — every figure in the book has a matching Python script in the repo, so you can take any example apart immediately. The coverage of coordinate transforms and the Matplotlib object model goes deeper than most tutorials, which usually stop at 'call plt.plot()'. The typography and color chapters treat these as first-class topics rather than afterthoughts, which matters for anyone submitting to journals. The PDF is free, the source is open, and the print edition exists if you want something physical.
The book was written for Matplotlib as of late 2021 and hasn't had meaningful updates since — some API details have shifted across Matplotlib 3.6–3.9 and a few examples will produce deprecation warnings or break. The 3D chapter covers mpl_toolkits.mplot3d, which is genuinely limited, and the book doesn't tell you clearly when you've hit that ceiling and should switch to something else. There's no requirements.txt or environment file, so reproducing figures requires hunting down the right library versions. The 'unsorted' directory of draft code is left in the repo unpolished, which is distracting.