Simple question regarding bar plot with categorical data
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Hello guys,
I am new to matlab, and I'm trying to do a simple bar plot, like this:
x = ["bananas" "apples" "cherries"];
y = [14,12,7];
bar(categorical(x),y);
The problem is that bar() function seems to sort the x-labels in alphabetical order. Is there any way to override this behaviour, so that the x-labels are left in their original order?
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Accepted Answer
Sean de Wolski
on 6 Oct 2017
Edited: Sean de Wolski
on 6 Oct 2017
x = categorical(["bananas" "apples" "cherries"]);
x = reordercats(x,{'bananas' 'apples' 'cherries'});
y = [14,12,7];
bar(x,y);
Categoricals can have order associated with them (for the purpose of relational operators).
7 Comments
Henry
on 14 Oct 2024
Since you guys are fixing this. Could you also put in a ticket to fix this for the errorbar() plot
More Answers (4)
Steven Lord
on 6 Oct 2017
If you're using release R2016b or later you could use histogram with a vector of BinCounts instead of using bar.
x = ["bananas" "apples" "cherries"];
C = categorical(x);
y = [14,12,7];
h = histogram('Categories', C, 'BinCounts', y);
0 Comments
Souarv De
on 8 Apr 2021
Edited: Souarv De
on 8 Apr 2021
I also faced the same issue. There are numerous shortcut techniques available to solve it out. What I used to follow is as below :
x = categorical(["bananas" "apples" "cherries"]);
x = reordercats(x,cellstr(x)');
y = [14,12,7];
bar(x,y);
0 Comments
Rik
on 6 Oct 2017
Edited: Rik
on 6 Oct 2017
The problem is not in bar, but in categorical. I can't find in the doc how to preserve order (with unique I know there is a switch to do so). So my suggestion would be to convert it yourself:
[~,ia,~]=unique(x,'stable');
x2=1:length(x);
x2=x(ia);
bar(x2,y)
xticks(x2)
xticklabels(x)%might not work, as this expects a cell stray containing strings
Of course, your labels are very likely to be unique, otherwise bar wil most likely yield an error, so this should work the same in all valid situations:
x2=1:length(x);
bar(x2,y)
xticks(x2)
xticklabels(x)%might not work, as this expects a cell stray containing strings
2 Comments
Rik
on 6 Oct 2017
xticklabels and xticks were introduced in R2016b, so for earlier releases you should use gca and set the XTick and XTickLabels properties.
michael dupin
on 3 Oct 2022
Edited: michael dupin
on 3 Oct 2022
*** Use histogram and not bar :)
I've been struggling with this until now, so sharing with the community. You can use the histogram simply as a drawing function, not actually counting anything.
Including the vertical bars as well (instead of "barh"), as long labels are typically better displayed horizontally.
Et voila! Good luck. Mike
x = ["bananas" "apples" "cherries"];
y = [14,12,7];
histogram('Categories',x,'BinCounts',y,'orientation','horizontal');
histogram('Categories',x,'BinCounts',y);
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