pyplot is a sub-module of matplotlib which doesn’t get imported with a simple import matplotlib.
>>> import matplotlib
>>> print matplotlib.pyplot
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'pyplot'
>>> import matplotlib.pyplot
>>>
It seems customary to do: import matplotlib.pyplot as plt at which time you can use the various functions and classes it contains:
p = plt.plot(...)