Line Plots of Matrix Data :: Basic Plotting Commands (Graphics)

Graphics

Line Plots of Matrix Data

When you call the plot function with a single matrix argument

```
plot(Y)
```

MATLAB draws one line for each column of the matrix. The x-axis is labeled with the row index vector 1:m, where m is the number of rows in Y. For example,

```
Z = peaks;
```

returns a 49-by-49 matrix obtained by evaluating a function of two variables. Plotting this matrix

```
plot(Z)
```

produces a graph with 49 lines.

The graph shows each column plotted as one line. The axes ColorOrder property determines the color of each line as MATLAB cycles through the list of colors.

In general, if plot is used with two arguments and if either X or Y has more than one row or column, then

If Y is a matrix, and x is a vector, plot(x,Y) successively plots the rows or columns of Y versus vector x, using different colors or line types for each. The row or column orientation varies depending on whether the number of elements in x matches the number of rows in Y or the number of columns. If Y is square, its columns are used.

If X is a matrix and y is a vector, plot(X,y) plots each row or column of X versus vector y. For example, plotting the peaks matrix versus the vector 1:length(peaks) rotates the previous plot.

```
y = 1:length(peaks);
plot(peaks,y)
```

If X and Y are both matrices of the same size, plot(X,Y) plots the columns of X versus the columns of Y.

You can also use the plot function with multiple pairs of matrix arguments.

```
plot(X1,Y1,X2,Y2,...)
```

This statement graphs each X-Y pair, generating multiple lines. The different pairs can be of different dimensions.

Setting Default Line Styles Plotting Imaginary and Complex Data