I'm learning to use `matplotlib` by studying examples, and a lot of examples seem to include a line like the following before creating a single plot...

```
fig, ax = plt.subplots()

```

Here are some examples...

* [Modify tick label text](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11244514/modify-tick-label-text)
* <http://matplotlib.org/examples/pylab_examples/boxplot_demo2.html>

I see this function used a lot, even though the example is only attempting to create a single chart. Is there some other advantage? The official demo for `subplots()` also uses `f, ax = subplots` when creating a single chart, and it only ever references ax after that. This is the code they use.

```
# Just a figure and one subplot
f, ax = plt.subplots()
ax.plot(x, y)
ax.set_title('Simple plot')

```