title: making matplotlib graphs look like R by default?
body: <p>Is there a way to make <code>matplotlib</code> behave identically to R, or almost like R, in terms of plotting defaults? For example R treats its axes pretty differently from <code>matplotlib</code>. The following histogram
  <img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/PC9A7.png" alt="enter image description here"></p>
  
  <p>has "floating axes" with outward ticks, such that there are no inner ticks (unlike <code>matplotlib</code>) and the axes do not cross "near" the origin. Also, the histogram can "spillover" to values that are not marked by the tick - e.g. the x-axis ends at 3 but the histograms extends slightly beyond it. How can this be achieved automatically for all histograms in <code>matplotlib</code>?</p>
  
  <p>Related question: scatter plots and line plots have different default axes settings in R, for example:
  <img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ln7QH.png" alt="enter image description here"></p>
  
  <p>There no inner ticks again and the ticks face outward. Also, the ticks start slightly after the origin point (where the y and x axes cross at the bottom left of the axes) and the ticks end slightly before the axes end. This way the labels of the lowest x-axis tick and lowest y-axis tick can't really cross, because there's a space between them and this gives the plots a very elegant clean look.  Note that there's also considerably more space between the axes ticklabels and the ticks themselves.</p>
  
  <p>Also, by default there are no ticks on the non-labeled x or y axes, meaning the y-axis on the left that is parallel to the labeled y-axis on the right has no ticks, and same for the x-axis, again removing clutter from the plots.</p>
  
  <p>Is there a way to make matplotlib look like this? And in general to look by default as much as default R plots?  I like <code>matplotlib</code> a lot but I think the R defaults / out-of-the-box plotting behavior really have gotten things right and its default settings rarely lead to overlapping tick labels, clutter or squished data, so I  would like the defaults to be as much like that as possible.</p>