Changing the tick frequency on the x or y axis

You could explicitly set where you want to tick marks with plt.xticks:

plt.xticks(np.arange(min(x), max(x)+1, 1.0))

For example,

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

x = [0,5,9,10,15]
y = [0,1,2,3,4]
plt.plot(x,y)
plt.xticks(np.arange(min(x), max(x)+1, 1.0))
plt.show()

(np.arange was used rather than Python's range function just in case min(x) and max(x) are floats instead of ints.)

The plt.plot (or ax.plot) function will automatically set default x and y limits. If you wish to keep those limits, and just change the stepsize of the tick marks, then you could use ax.get_xlim() to discover what limits Matplotlib has already set.

start, end = ax.get_xlim()
ax.xaxis.set_ticks(np.arange(start, end, stepsize))

The default tick formatter should do a decent job rounding the tick values to a sensible number of significant digits. However, if you wish to have more control over the format, you can define your own formatter. For example,

ax.xaxis.set_major_formatter(ticker.FormatStrFormatter('%0.1f'))

Here's a runnable example:

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib.ticker as ticker

x = [0,5,9,10,15]
y = [0,1,2,3,4]
fig, ax = plt.subplots()
ax.plot(x,y)
start, end = ax.get_xlim()
ax.xaxis.set_ticks(np.arange(start, end, 0.712123))
ax.xaxis.set_major_formatter(ticker.FormatStrFormatter('%0.1f'))
plt.show()

Another approach is to set the axis locator:

import matplotlib.ticker as plticker

loc = plticker.MultipleLocator(base=1.0) # this locator puts ticks at regular intervals
ax.xaxis.set_major_locator(loc)

There are several different types of locator depending upon your needs.

Here is a full example:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib.ticker as plticker

x = [0,5,9,10,15]
y = [0,1,2,3,4]
fig, ax = plt.subplots()
ax.plot(x,y)
loc = plticker.MultipleLocator(base=1.0) # this locator puts ticks at regular intervals
ax.xaxis.set_major_locator(loc)
plt.show()

I like this solution (from the Matplotlib Plotting Cookbook):

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib.ticker as ticker

x = [0,5,9,10,15]
y = [0,1,2,3,4]

tick_spacing = 1

fig, ax = plt.subplots(1,1)
ax.plot(x,y)
ax.xaxis.set_major_locator(ticker.MultipleLocator(tick_spacing))
plt.show()

This solution give you explicit control of the tick spacing via the number given to ticker.MultipleLocater(), allows automatic limit determination, and is easy to read later.

In case anyone is interested in a general one-liner, simply get the current ticks and use it to set the new ticks by sampling every other tick.

ax.set_xticks(ax.get_xticks()[::2])