Python hide ticks but show tick labels

Thanks for your answers @julien-spronck and @cmidi.
As a note, I had to use both methods to make it work:

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

fig, (ax1, ax2, ax3) = plt.subplots(1, 3, figsize=(11, 3))

data = np.random.random((4, 4))

ax1.imshow(data)
ax1.set(title='Bad', ylabel='$A_y$')
# plt.setp(ax1.get_xticklabels(), visible=False)
# plt.setp(ax1.get_yticklabels(), visible=False)
ax1.tick_params(axis='both', which='both', length=0)

ax2.imshow(data)
ax2.set(title='Somewhat OK', ylabel='$B_y$')
plt.setp(ax2.get_xticklabels(), visible=False)
plt.setp(ax2.get_yticklabels(), visible=False)
# ax2.tick_params(axis='both', which='both', length=0)

ax3.imshow(data)
ax3.set(title='Nice', ylabel='$C_y$')
plt.setp(ax3.get_xticklabels(), visible=False)
plt.setp(ax3.get_yticklabels(), visible=False)
ax3.tick_params(axis='both', which='both', length=0)

plt.show()

While attending a coursera course on Python, this was a question.

Below is the given solution, which I think is more readable and intuitive.

ax.tick_params(top=False,
               bottom=False,
               left=False,
               right=False,
               labelleft=True,
               labelbottom=True)

You can set the tick length to 0 using tick_params (http://matplotlib.org/api/axes_api.html#matplotlib.axes.Axes.tick_params):

fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(111)
ax.plot([1],[1])
ax.tick_params(axis=u'both', which=u'both',length=0)
plt.show()