Two little things I need now and then and am tired of looking up. To change the default font to one which supports Greek characters:
from matplotlib import rcParams rcParams['font.sans-serif'] = 'DejaVu Sans'
To scale the xticklabels:
ax.set_xticklabels([ int(np.round(i)) for i in ax.get_xticks()*10**6 ])
Here is a collection of short tutorials, examples and code snippets that illustrate some of the useful idioms and tricks to make snazzier figures and overcome some matplotlib warts.