How to plot bar with different height and differenth width in matlab? - matlab

I am having a big problem in Matlab, because it seems that I want to do something that is not so usual.
Basically I am trying to implement a way of group distribution together called Vincentizing.In order to do that I am following the instruction of a paper (Ratcliff 1979 - Group Reaction Time Distributions and an Analysis of Distribution Statistics). Everything is fine until I have to plot the actual graph. I have an array that contains the quantiles of my dataset. The tutorial I am following says:
distribution histograms can be constructed by plotting quantiles on the abscissa and then constructing rectangles between adjacent quantiles such that all the rectangles have equal areas, as in Figure 2 (link of the image below)
http://postimg.org/image/btftrd6y7/
Once I calculate the quantiles, I can set the area to some value, let's say 10, and I can therefore calculate the height of each bar. The width of each bar is the distance between two adjacent quantiles, and of course I can calculate that as well. I have all the information I need, but I don't know how to plot a graph. How can, in matlab, plot I graph like the one in figure?
(it seems that I can plot histogram of different width, but with the hist function I cannot actually specify the height. With the bar function, however, I can specify the height but it seems I cannot change the width..)
Every help is appreciated.

The simplest solution is to use rectangle:
% sample data: set the start of each bar, the bottom (here 0), the width and the height
x = [0.5 0.6 0.9 1 1.2]; % start of bar
y = zeros(length(x),1);
dx = diff([x 1.8]); % width of bar
dy = [1 3 2 .5 .1];
figure, hold on
for ii=1:length(x)
rectangle('position',[x(ii) y(ii) dx(ii) dy(ii)])
end
axis([0.5 2 0 4.1])
ylabel('Prob density')
xlabel('Time')

Related

Draw evenly-spaced height lines of a function in MATLAB

I would like to draw height lines of a function (represented by matrices, of course), using MATLAB.
I'm familiar with contour, but contour draws lines at even-spaced heights, while I would like to see lines (with height labels), in constant distance from one another when plotted.
This means that if a function grows rapidly in one area, I won't get a plot with dense height lines, but only a few lines, at evenly spaced distances.
I tried to find such an option in the contour help page, but couldn't see anything. Is there a built in function which does it?
There is no built-in function to do this (to my knowledge). You have to realize that in the general case you can't have lines that both represent iso-values and that are spaced with a fixed distance. This is only possible with plots that have special scaling properties, and again, this is not the general case.
This being said, you can imagine to approach your desired plot by using the syntax in which you specify the levels to plots:
...
contour(Z,v) draws a contour plot of matrix Z with contour lines at the data values specified in the monotonically increasing vector v.
...
So all you need is the good vector v of height values. For this we can take the classical Matlab exemple:
[X,Y,Z] = peaks;
contour(X,Y,Z,10);
axis equal
colorbar
and transform it in:
[X,Y,Z] = peaks;
[~, I] = sort(Z(:));
v = Z(I(round(linspace(1, numel(Z),10))));
contour(X,Y,Z,v);
axis equal
colorbar
The result may not be as nice as what you expected, but this is the best I can think of given that what you ask is, again, not possible.
Best,
One thing you could do is, instead of plotting the contours at equally spaces levels (this is what happens when you pass an integer to contour), to plot the contours at fixed percentiles of your data (this requires passing a vector of levels to contour):
Z = peaks(100); % generate some pretty data
nlevel = 30;
subplot(121)
contour(Z, nlevel) % spaced equally between min(Z(:)) and max(Z(:))
title('Contours at fixed height')
subplot(122)
levels = prctile(Z(:), linspace(0, 100, nlevel));
contour(Z, levels); % at given levels
title('Contours at fixed percentiles')
Result:
For the right figure, the lines have somewhat equal spacing for most of the image. Note that the spacing is only approximately equal, and it is impossible to get the equal spacing over the complete image, except in some trivial cases.

MATLAB contour plot of 2D scatter

What I want to do is very simple, I just cannot seem to get MATLAB to do it. I would like to plot contours using my 2D data set.
My data set is large; 2 x 844240. I can do a scatter plot just fine,
scatter(Data(1,:), Data(2,:));
Reading through the forums I found Scatter plot with density in Matlab, where a hisogram was plotted. This would suffice, however, I would like to overlay the plots.
The issue is that they have different axis, my scatter data has an axis of [0 0.01 0 2500]; whereas the histogram is [0 100 0 100].
Is there a way to change the axis values of the histogram without modifying the image?
Thanks!
If I understand correctly, you are using hist3 to construct a histogram and then using imagesc to plot it. You can use the second output argument of hist3 to get the histogram bin centers, and then pass those on to imagesc, e.g.
nBins_x = 100;
nBins_y = 100;
[counts, bin_centers] = hist3(Data, [nBins_x nBins_y]);
x_bin_centers = bin_centers{1};
y_bin_centers = bin_centers{2};
imagesc(x_bin_centers, y_bin_centers, counts)
A couple other notes:
In your case, you will need to transpose your [2 x N] matrix when passing it to hist3, which expects an [N x 2] matrix.
imagesc puts the first axis (which I've been calling the "x" axis) on the vertical axis and the second on the horizontal axis. If you want to flip it, you can use:
imagesc(y_bin_centers, x_bin_centers, counts')
If you want to specify the histogram bins explicitly (e.g. to match your scatterplot) you can specify that in the arguments to hist3:
x_bin_centers = linspace(0, .01, 100);
y_bin_centers = linspace(0, 2500, 100);
counts = hist3(Data, {x_bin_centers, y_bin_centers};
And if you want a contour plot, you can use (note that contour takes the axes arguments in a different order than imagesc):
contour(x_bin_centers, y_bin_centers, counts');
If you are unhappy with the jaggedness of the contours, you may consider using a kernel density estimate instead of a histogram (check out ksdensity) (oops, looks like ksdensity is 1-D only. But there are File Exchange submissions for bivariate kernel density estimation).

Compress the size or reduce the line spacing of a legend in matlab figures

I'm trying to make a legend in a matlab figure that takes less space, in particular vertical size. Ideally, if I could change the inter-line spacing of the legend, this would have solved it, but I can't seem to find a way to do it.
I've searched around in Mathworks questions and Google. I've even tried to "write" from scratch the legend, but it doesn't work when I try to export to eps.
Is there a way to control the inter-line spacing in Matlab's legend? something undocumented maybe?
One way would be to adjust the aspect ratio of the legend:
set(h,'PlotBoxAspectRatioMode','manual');
set(h,'PlotBoxAspectRatio',[1 0.8 1]);
(Default is [1 1 1]).
You can also play with the exact positioning of the various legend elements. If h is the handle for your legend:
hc = get(h,'Children');
Now, hc will be of length 3 x the number of items in your legend.
hc(1) is the marker, hc(2) is the line, hc(3) is the text.
(and so on for subsequent items).
hc(1) will have a entry YData(vertical position, single value), hc(2) also has YData (vertical position - vector of two identical values), and hc(3) contains Position - [x y z] vector. The Y values for all these three should be the same.
Obtain the y-positions:
yd = zeros(length(hc)/3,1);
for n = 1:length(yd);
yd(n) = get(hc(1+(n-1)*3),'YData');
end
Assuming your legend doesn't have any text that goes over more than one line,yd should be evenly spaced steps. Define a new spacing of your choice, yd2.
Set new positions:
% markers
for n = 1:length(yd2)
set(hc(1+(n-1)*3),'YData',yd2(n));
end
% lines
for n = 1:3
set(hc(2+(n-1)*3),'YData',[yd2(n),yd2(n)]);
end
% text
for n = 1:3;
pos = get(hc(3+(n-1)*3),'Position');
pos(2) = yd(n);
set(hc(3+(n-1)*3),'Position',pos);
end
Problem - this shifts all the text and markers but doesn't change the border box. The easiest way if trying to make fine adjustments is to first define the final size/position of the legend, and then reposition/resize elements within to taste.
Also, you may find that when writing out images MATLAB helpfully redraws the image, resetting your adjustments. See this blog post on Undocumented MATLAB for info on that.

Is there any way to restrict the plots in one grapgh?

I'm trying to plot several signals in one graph and i would like to restrict them and sort of minimize it so all my signals will be clear (more or less).
I have no idea how to do it. I'm adding an image so what i need to do will be clearer.
My data changes but in general it's the mean intensity of each column of a certain area in an intensity image.I tried to do it like with the same idea as you but i don't get the right plot as i wanted. A is the relevant matrix,b is the matrix with shifted values:
for i=1:20
b(i,:)=A(i,:)+(100*i);
plot(b(i,:))
hold on
end
I will also add 2 images: one is the plot of all the 20 signals that i get and the other one is the plot of only the first signal. I don't understand why do they look so different.
You can try something like that :
x = [1:100]; %Distance 1 to 100
y = F(x) % Your first function (signal)
y2 = 0.5*G(x) % Your second function (signal)
plot(x,y,x,y2); % plot both function in a single plot.
hleg1 = legend('Intensity t1,'Intensity t27');
So you have your signal at intensity t27 half cut for each value ( 0.5 ), so it shift down.

axis equal in a Matlab loglog plot

In Matlab the command 'axis equal':
sets the aspect ratio so that equal tick mark
increments on the x-,y- and z-axis are equal in size. This
makes SPHERE(25) look like a sphere, instead of an ellipsoid
However, when using the loglog plotting function, this doesn't work "properly". What I would like to happen is that I get an aspect ratio so that a given factor occupies the same visual distance. What actually happens is that
>> loglog(2.^[1:20]*1e10,(2.^[1:20]).^2)
>> axis equal
results in
rather than
So that the slope 2 (from the squared) could be easily observed, and so that there wouldn't be all that extra white space.
My question is:
Is there a Matlab command that does this for me? Alternatively, has anyone solved this problem before?
One solution is for you to modify the axes limits and 'DataAspectRatio' properties yourself so that a decade on one axis equals a decade on the other. Here's how you can do it for your example:
loglog(2.^[1:20]*1e10,(2.^[1:20]).^2); %# Plot your sample data
xLimits = [1e10 1e16]; %# Limits for the x axis
yLimits = [1 1e12]; %# Limits for the y axis
logScale = diff(yLimits)/diff(xLimits); %# Scale between the x and y ranges
powerScale = diff(log10(yLimits))/... %# Scale between the x and y powers
diff(log10(xLimits));
set(gca,'Xlim',xLimits,'YLim',yLimits,... %# Set the limits and the
'DataAspectRatio',[1 logScale/powerScale 1]); %# data aspect ratio
set(gca,'XTick',[1e10 1e12 1e14 1e16]); %# Change the x axis tick marks
And here's the resulting plot:
Notice that the space between the 100 and 102 tick marks on the y axis spans the same number of pixels as the space between the 1010 and 1012 tick marks on the x axis, thus making a decade on one axis equal to a decade on the other.
If you don't want to change the axes limits, and instead want to use the default limits chosen by MATLAB, you can simply fetch the limits from the axes to perform the computations:
xLimits = get(hAxes,'XLim');
yLimits = get(hAxes,'YLim');
However, in order to disable MATLAB's automatic axes resizing behavior you will still have to either set the axes limits to the same values or set the limit mode properties to 'manual' when you update the 'DataAspectRatio' property:
set(gca,'Xlim',xLimits,'YLim',yLimits,...
'DataAspectRatio',[1 logScale/powerScale 1]);
%# OR...
set(gca,'XLimMode','manual','YLimMode','manual',...
'DataAspectRatio',[1 logScale/powerScale 1]);
If all of this seems like a lot of work, you can simplify things by putting it all into a function. I will actually be submitting a function decades_equal to the MathWorks File Exchange based on the code in this answer. For the time being, here is a trimmed down version (i.e. no error checking or help) that you can use:
function decades_equal(hAxes,xLimits,yLimits)
if (nargin < 2) || isempty(xLimits)
xLimits = get(hAxes,'XLim');
end
if (nargin < 3) || isempty(yLimits)
yLimits = get(hAxes,'YLim');
end
logScale = diff(yLimits)/diff(xLimits);
powerScale = diff(log10(yLimits))/diff(log10(xLimits));
set(hAxes,'Xlim',xLimits,...
'YLim',yLimits,...
'DataAspectRatio',[1 logScale/powerScale 1]);
end
And you can call the function as follows:
loglog(2.^[1:20]*1e10,(2.^[1:20]).^2); %# Plot your sample data
decades_equal(gca); %# Make the decades equal sizes
How it works...
You may be wondering what the logic is behind how I chose the scaling factors above. When trying to make the displayed size of a decade equal for each axes, we have to take into account both the number and sizes of decades within the axes ranges. In the above code, I am basically computing the average decade size for each axis, then using the ratios of the average decade sizes to scale the axes accordingly. For example, diff(yLimits) gives the total size of the y axis, and diff(log10(yLimits)) gives the number of decades (i.e. powers of ten) displayed on the y axis.
This may be easier to see if I reorder the operations in the above code like so:
yDecade = diff(yLimits)/diff(log10(yLimits)); %# Average y decade size
xDecade = diff(xLimits)/diff(log10(xLimits)); %# Average x decade size
set(gca,'XLim',xLimits,'YLim',yLimits,...
'DataAspectRatio',[1 yDecade/xDecade 1]);
And this will give the same scaling results as before.