Latex Formulas in Matplotlib

This tutorial explains how we can render the LaTex formulas or equations in Matplotlib.

Write LaTex Formulae in Matplotlib Python

import math
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

x = np.linspace(0, 2 * math.pi, 100)
y = np.sin(x)

plt.plot(x, y)
plt.xlabel("x")
plt.ylabel(r"$\sin (x)$")
plt.title("Plot of sinx")
plt.show()

Output:

It will render the LaTex formulae in the Matplotlib figure.

To render a LaTex formula in Matplotlib, we must set 'text.usetex' to True. We can use the following script to check the value of 'text.usetex':

import matplotlib

print(matplotlib.rcParams["text.usetex"])

Output:

False

You may get True as the output if 'text.usetex' to True for your system. If 'text.usetex' is set to False, we can use the following script to set 'text.usetex' to True:

import matplotlib

matplotlib.rcParams["text.usetex"] = True

We also need to have LaTex, dvipng and Ghostscript (Version 9.0 or later) to render the LaTex formulae and add all the installations dependencies to the PATH.

We can also render Greek alphabets and many more symbols in Matplotlib using the Tex format.

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

alpha = x = np.linspace(0, 10, 10)
y1 = alpha
y2 = alpha ** 2
y3 = alpha ** 3

plt.plot(x, y1, label=r"$\alpha$")
plt.plot(x, y2, label=r"$\alpha^2$")
plt.plot(x, y3, label=r"$\alpha^3$")
plt.xlabel(r"$\alpha$")
plt.legend()
plt.show()

Output: