title: matplotlib.pyplot functions creating new figures instead of applyting to the current one
body: <p>I'm starting to learn matplotlib, following the <a href="https://matplotlib.org/tutorials/introductory/pyplot.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">pyplot tutorial</a>, but something weird—I think—is happening in the very first part.</p>
  <p>When I do this,</p>
  <pre><code>import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
  plt.plot([1, 2, 3, 4])
  plt.ylabel('some numbers')
  plt.show()
  </code></pre>
  <p><code>plt.plot([1, 2, 3, 4])</code> creates the figure, but <code>plt.ylabel('some numbers')</code> creates another figure with the label but with no plot. Nothing about this is mentioned in the tutorial, and I have been reading about the <code>plt</code> functions to see if this is supposed to happen and/or how to fix it, but can't find anything. What can I do about this?</p>
  <p>I just installed matplotlib 3.1.3 and I'm running Python 3.7.6 on Spyder 4.0.1</p>
  <p>I see that, in this version of Spyder, I don't need to use <code>plt.show()</code>, because all figures are shown in the 'Plots' pane.</p>
  <p>Thanks in advance.</p>
  <p><strong>EDIT 1</strong></p>
  <p><strong>I HAVEN'T FOUND AN ANSWER FOR THIS.</strong></p>
  <p>If I copy and paste these two lines into my shell:</p>
  <pre><code>plt.plot([1, 2, 3, 4])
  plt.ylabel('some numbers')
  </code></pre>
  <p>I get the label applied to the figure with the plot, as it should, but, if I execute them one at a time, I get the situation described above. I'd like to know why this is happening and if it should be happening.</p>