arange generates lists (well, numpy arrays); type help(np.arange) for the details. You don't need to call it on existing lists.
>>> x = [1,2,3,4]
>>> y = [3,5,7,9]
>>>
>>> m,b = np.polyfit(x, y, 1)
>>> m
2.0000000000000009
>>> b
0.99999999999999833
I should add that I tend to use poly1d here rather than write out "m*x+b" and the higher-order equivalents, so my version of your code would look something like this:
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
x = [1,2,3,4]
y = [3,5,7,10] # 10, not 9, so the fit isn't perfect
coef = np.polyfit(x,y,1)
poly1d_fn = np.poly1d(coef)
# poly1d_fn is now a function which takes in x and returns an estimate for y
plt.plot(x,y, 'yo', x, poly1d_fn(x), '--k')
plt.xlim(0, 5)
plt.ylim(0, 12)
