Wrong latex rendering in matplotlib

Question

With python 2.7.12 (on Ubuntu 16.04) and matplotlib 1.5.2, the following code does not display correctly:

from matplotlib.pyplot import * plot([1,2],[1,1]) xlabel(r"$\beta+1$") title(r'$\alpha > \beta$') show() 

Xlabel makes it look like it was $\partial i\Delta$ , and the title bar displays like it was $\rightharpoonup\Upsilon\partial$ , as you can see here:

My latex installation is otherwise functional. Any idea what the problem is?

Answer 1

As you can read in the user manual about the matplotlibrc file:

 # [...] When text.usetex is False, # font.family may also be one or more concrete font names. 

Therefore, you should use the specific font.family property or simply change the text.usetex parameter to True in the matplotlibrc file.

 #text.usetex : False # use latex for all text handling. The following fonts # are supported through the usual rc parameter settings: # new century schoolbook, bookman, times, palatino, # zapf chancery, charter, serif, sans-serif, helvetica, # avant garde, courier, monospace, computer modern roman, # computer modern sans serif, computer modern typewriter # If another font is desired which can loaded using the # LaTeX \usepackage command, please inquire at the # matplotlib mailing list