matplotlib axis('tight') doesn't work?

Question

According to the documentation, ax.autoscale(tight=True) should

If True, set view limits to data limits;

With ax.ax

Answer 1

You're not necessarily doing anything wrong. You're using matplotlib version 2 (or greater). In this version the default plot layout was changed so that the axis had 5% padding added on to either end. Here's a link describing the plot layout: https://matplotlib.org/users/dflt_style_changes.html#plot-layout

From the link, to change it back to the 'classic' style, use:

mpl.rcParams['axes.autolimit_mode'] = 'round_numbers'
mpl.rcParams['axes.xmargin'] = 0
mpl.rcParams['axes.ymargin'] = 0