TeX $\times$ symbol not working in matplotlib?

Fri Apr 18 13:15:50 EDT 2014

gwhite <gwhite at ti.com> Wrote in message:
> Hi,
>> I am trying to understand how to get the TeX "\times" symbol to work. It is in the title() string in the code I pasted in. The "\circ" symbol seems fine, by comparison. "\times" ends up as "imes" in the figure title.
>> I am probably doing something dumb (hey, maybe a lot of dumb things!), but if you can spot and describe my mistake, I would be quite happy about that.
>
You want a raw string, as you did correctly in two other places
 in the code. A raw string tells Python not to use the backslash
 as an escape. 
(Chris said backspace, but he meant backslash)
You specify raw string by the letter r just before the quote. 
> > plt.title('$\mathrm{poles}$ $(\times)$ \
> $\mathrm{\&}$ $\mathrm{zeros}$ \
> $(\circ)$ $\mathrm{of}$ $T(s)T(-s)$',\
> fontsize=16)
>
Change to:
plt.title(r'$\mathrm{poles}$ $(\times)$ \
 $\mathrm{\&}$ $\mathrm{zeros}$ \
 $(\circ)$ $\mathrm{of}$ $T(s)T(-s)$',\
 fontsize=16)
-- 
DaveA