How to get a matplotlib Axes instance to plot to?

Matplotlib Server Side Programming Programming

To get the axes instance, we will use the subplots() method.

Steps

Make a list of years.
Make a list of populations in that year.
Get the number of labels using np.arrange(len(years)) method.
Set the width of the bars.
Create fig and ax variables using subplots() method, where default nrows and ncols are 1.
Set the Y-axis label of the figure using set_ylabel().
Set the title of the figure, using set_title() method.
Set the x-ticks with x that is created in step 3, using set_xticks method.
Set the xtick_labels with years data, using set_xticklabels method.
Use plt.show() method to show the figure.

Example

from matplotlib import pyplot as plt
import numpy as np

years = [1901, 1911, 1921, 1931, 1941, 1951, 1961, 1971, 1981, 1991, 2001, 2011]
population = [237.4, 238.4, 252.09, 251.31, 278.98, 318.66, 361.09, 439.23, 548.16, 683.33, 846.42, 1028.74]

x = np.arange(len(years))       # the label locations
width = 0.35                    # the width of the bars

fig, ax = plt.subplots()        # axes instance

ax.set_ylabel('Population(in million)')
ax.set_title('Years')
ax.set_xticks(x)
ax.set_xticklabels(years)

plt.show()