MATLAB For Dummies, 2nd Edition

Appendix B

MATLAB’s Plotting Routines

The tables in this appendix, B-1 through B-5, list each of the plotting routines in MATLAB with a brief description and an example. To save space, some entries show a single encompassing example for multiple commands. An example may also use an ellipsis (…) to show the continuation of a pattern. To assist you, the code includes several functions to generate test matrices, for example, rand(), magic(), peaks(), cylinder(), ellipsoid(), and sphere(). It’s also important to note that MATLAB is always changing and that some functions, like ezpolar(), are eventually going to go away. After all, many of the other ez* functions have retired and are now sipping beverages on a sandy beach on a tropical island.

TABLE B-1 Basic Plotting Routines

Routine	Description	Example
comet	Just like plot, but comet animates the trajectory; it helps to have a larger vector to slow down the comet trace a tad	x=[0:2*pi/100:2*pi]; y=exp(-0.4*x).*sin(x); plot(x,y); figure(2) comet(x,y); figure(3) ribbon(x,y);figure(4) y2=100*exp(-0.4*x).*cos(x); plotyy(x,y,x,y2)
plot	Plots data passed in by vectors
plotyy	Plots data where y values may differ greatly — it makes two y-axes
ribbon	Like plot, but it displays the data as 3D ribbons
fplot, fimplicit	Plots the expression or function	fplot(@(x) sin(x),[-2*pi 2*pi])
loglog	Plots data on a log scale on both x- and y-axes — y proportional to a power of x is straight on this plot	x=[0:2*pi/100:2*pi]; y=10*x.^pi; ...