The documentation for the matplotlib python library is terrible for newbies.

There is a "Tutorial" section, but the thing doesn't even explain what you can do until you get to the 4th section!
It starts off with some confusing examples, how to change the appearance and only at section 4 do you actually start to get an introduction to the different components you might want to use...

At some point you finally realize, most of the stuff that is shown can be omitted because the .pyplot module is all you need.