Problem

I often want to make a figure that is larger than what I have in my rcParams. However, I would also like to keep the same aspect ratio for this new figure, unfortunately this then requires that I do mental math 😞. For example if I want a figure be to be 1.5 times larger than the rcDefault size of [6.4, 4.8] then I will have to multiply in my head or add a few lines of code. Instead I normally just make a haphazard guess of two numbers of that I hope will result in a similar aspect ratio.

Proposed Solution

Modify the figsize argument to plt.figure to also accept a single float value. When given as (float, float) the original behavior will remain. When given as float then the figsize will be computed as a multiple of the rcParam figsize. Like so:

from collections import Iterable
def figure(figsize=1,*args,**kwargs):
    if not isinstance(figsize, Iterable):
        figsize = [figsize*x for x in rcParams['figure.figsize']]
    return plt.figure(figsize=figsize,*args,**kwargs)

Additional context and prior art

This is somewhat redundant with the dpi argument, but I think the proposed solution is more intuitive.