how to make an axes occupy multiple subplots in python pyplot

Question

I would like to have three plots in single figure. The figure should have a subplot layout of two by two, where the first plot should occupy the first two subplot cells (i.e. the whole first row of plot cells) and the other plots should be positioned underneath the first one in cells 3 and 4. I know that matlab allows this by using the subplot command like so

subplot(2,2,[1,2]) % the plot will span subplots 1 and 2

Is it also possible in pyplot to have a single axes occupy more than one subplot? The docstring of pyplot.subplot doesn't talk about it.

Anyone got an easy solution? Thanks in advance

Answer 1

You can simply do:

x = arange(0, 7, 0.01)

subplot(2, 1, 1)
plot(x, sin(x))

subplot(2, 2, 3)
plot(x, cos(x))

subplot(2, 2, 4)
plot(x, sin(x)*cos(x))

i.e., the first plot is really a plot in the upper half (the figure is only divided into 2*1 = 2 cells), and the following two smaller plots are done in a 2*2=4 cell grid.