from matplotlib.dates import strpdate2num #from matplotlib.mlab import load import numpy as np from pylab import figure, show dates, closes = np.loadtxt( '../data/msft.csv', delimiter=',', converters={0:strpdate2num('%d-%b-%y')}, skiprows=1, usecols=(0,2), unpack=True) fig = figure() ax = fig.add_subplot(111) ax.plot_date(dates, closes, '-') fig.autofmt_xdate() show()