Create beautiful square figures with big labels and the correct number of ticks

figure_formatting.py

def create_figure(size=3.6,nxticks=6):
    import matplotlib
    from matplotlib.ticker import MaxNLocator
    figure=matplotlib.pyplot.figure(figsize=(size,size)) 
    ax = figure.add_subplot(1, 1, 1, position = [0.2, 0.15, 0.75, 0.75]) 
    ax.xaxis.set_major_locator(MaxNLocator(nxticks)) 
    return ax

def format_axes(ax,xf='%d',yf='%d',nxticks=6,nyticks=6,labelsize=10):
    import pylab
    from matplotlib.ticker import FormatStrFormatter, MaxNLocator
    xFormatter = FormatStrFormatter(xf)
    yFormatter = FormatStrFormatter(yf)
    if xf:
      ax.xaxis.set_major_formatter(xFormatter)
      ax.xaxis.set_major_locator(MaxNLocator(nxticks))
      ax.tick_params(axis='x', which='major', labelsize=labelsize)
    if yf:
      ax.yaxis.set_major_formatter(yFormatter)
      ax.yaxis.set_major_locator(MaxNLocator(nyticks))
      ax.tick_params(axis='y', which='major', labelsize=labelsize)