matplotlib integration and pylab mode part of why ipython is so widely used in scientific computing is that it is designed as companion to libraries like matplotlib and other gui toolkits don' worry if you have never used matplotlib beforeit will be discussed in much more detail later in this book if you create matplotlib plot window in the regular python shellyou'll be sad to find that the gui event loop "takes controlof the python session until the plot window is closed that won' work for interactive data analysis and visualizationso ipython has ipythonan interactive computing and development environment www it-ebooks info