Clean ggplot-styling for matplotlib graphics with HUSL¶

Python is a great language and matplotlib is an amazing library for creating scientific graphs, but one area where I think R excels is the simplicity and beauty of the ggplot library. I hope that Continuum Analytics Bokeh package will end up making this little hack unnecessary in the future, but in the meantime I've been using a nice little bit of code I found on http://messymind.net/2012/07/making-matplotlib-look-like-ggplot/ to make my matplotlib a little more R-like without resorting to the nuclear option of calling RPy.

Lets first look at standard matplotlib output: