Please note that newer versions of MPL have a shortcut for this task. An example is shown in the other answer to this question: https://stackoverflow.com/a/11386056/42346
The code below is for illustrative purposes and may not necessarily be optimized.
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
def xticklabels_example():
fig = plt.figure()
x = np.arange(20)
y1 = np.cos(x)
y2 = (x**2)
y3 = (x**3)
yn = (y1,y2,y3)
COLORS = ('b','g','k')
for i,y in enumerate(yn):
ax = fig.add_subplot(len(yn),1,i+1)
ax.plot(x, y, ls='solid', color=COLORS[i])
if i != len(yn) - 1:
# all but last
ax.set_xticklabels( () )
else:
for tick in ax.xaxis.get_major_ticks():
tick.label.set_fontsize(14)
# specify integer or one of preset strings, e.g.
#tick.label.set_fontsize('x-small')
tick.label.set_rotation('vertical')
fig.suptitle('Matplotlib xticklabels Example')
plt.show()
if __name__ == '__main__':
xticklabels_example()
