title: Is there a way to detach matplotlib plots so that the computation can continue?
body: <p>After these instructions in the Python interpreter one gets a window with a plot:</p>
  
  <pre><code>from matplotlib.pyplot import *
  plot([1,2,3])
  show()
  # other code
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Unfortunately, I don't know how to continue to interactively explore the figure created by <code>show()</code> while the program does further calculations.</p>
  
  <p>Is it possible at all? Sometimes calculations are long and it would help if they would proceed during examination of intermediate results.</p>