Why can't I use 'scatter3' here? - matlab

Question

[X,Y] = meshgrid(-8:.5:8);
R = sqrt(X.^2 + Y.^2) + eps;
Z = sin(R)./R;
scatter3(X,Y,Z)
Error using scatter3 (line 64)
X, Y and Z must be vectors of the same length.
Matlab R2018b windows x64

Answer 1

As shown in the documentation, X, Y, Z must be vectors. (When you enter an article on mathworks from Googling, say, "matlab scatter3", you will first see the syntax for the function. Blue text means hyperlink. All the inputs are linked to the bottom of the page where their exact typing is defined.)
The reason is (probably) as follows.
As stated in the documentation, scatter3 puts circles (or other symbols of your choice if you modify the graphic object) on 3D coordinates of your choice. The coordinates are the ith element of X, Y, Z respectively. For example, the x-coordinate of the 10th point you wish to plot in 3D is X(10).
Thus it is not natural to input matrices into scatter3. If you know X(i), Y(i), Z(i) are indeed the coordinates you want to plot for all i, even though your X, Y, Z are not vectors for some reason, you need to reshape X, Y, Z.
In order to reshape, you can simply do scatter3(X(:), Y(:), Z(:)) which tells Matlab to read your arrays as a vectors. (You should look up in what order this is done. But it is in the intuitive way.) Or you can use reshape. Chances are: reshape is faster for large data set. But ofc (:) is more convenient.

Answer 2

The following should work:
[X,Y] = meshgrid(-8:.5:8);
R = sqrt(X.^2 + Y.^2) + eps;
Z = sin(R)./R;
X = X(:);
Y = Y(:);
Z = Z(:);
scatter3(X,Y,Z)
scatter3 needs vectors, not matrices as far as I can see here
this is my result:
If you want to use meshgrid without reshaping the matrices you have to use plot3 and the 'o' symbol. So you can get a similar result with:
plot3(X,Y,Z,'o')
EDIT:
A question that arose in association with this post was, which of the following methods is more efficient in terms of computation speed: The function reshape(X,[],1), suggested by me, or the simpler colon version X(:), suggested by #Argyll.
After timing the reshape function versus the : method, I have to admit that the latter is more efficient.
I added my results and the code I used to time both functions:
sizes = linspace(100,10000,100);
time_reshape = [];
time_col = [];
for i=1:length(sizes)
X = rand(sizes(i)); % Create random squared matrix
r = #() ResFcn(X);
c = #() ColFcn(X);
time_reshape = [time_reshape timeit(r)/1000] % Take average of 1000 measurements
time_col = [time_col timeit(c)/1000] % Take average of 1000 measurements
end
figure()
hold on
grid on
plot(sizes(2:end), time_col(2:end))
plot(sizes(2:end), time_reshape(2:end))
legend("Colon","Reshape","Location","northwest")
title("Comparison: Reshape vs. Colon Method")
xlabel("Length of squared matrix")
ylabel("Average execution time [s]")
hold off
function res = ResFcn(X)
for i = 1:1000 % Repeat 1000 times
res = reshape(X,[],1);
end
end
function res = ColFcn(X)
for i = 1:1000 % Repeat 1000 times
res = X(:);
end
end