If you don't want to use Ipython, you could change the
> backend to Agg, which is non interactive (figures won't pop
> up), save figures to a file and open it with a viewer. For
> instance, the following should work from any ide.
Alternatively, you can use the TkAgg backend from the standard python
shell with interactive set to True, as described on
http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/interactive.html
JDH