Display data points in boxplots

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Gina Carts
Gina Carts on 2 May 2019
Commented: Adam Danz on 29 Jun 2020
I am using the boxplot function to create boxplots of my data. But I would also like to plot my data on top of the boxplots.
Can anyone please help with that?
Below is an example of my code
Data1 = [0.2658 0.1969 0.3702 0.2259 0.2575 0.2253 0.4486 0.5385 0.3982 0.2899]';
Data2 = [0.2589 0.2094 0.3575 0.2391 0.2547 0.1987 0.4156 0.5443 0.394 0.3]';
Data3 = [0.2589 0.2094 0.3575 0.2391 0.2547 0.2087 0.4256 0.5243 0.3822 0.2983]';
group = [ ones(size(Data1));
2 * ones(size(Data2))
3 * ones(size(Data3))];
boxplot([Data1; Data2; Data3],group)
h = boxplot([Data1; Data2; Data3],group)
set(h,{'linew'},{2})
set(gca,'XTickLabel', {'Data1'; 'Data2'; 'Data3'})

Accepted Answer

Adam Danz
Adam Danz on 2 May 2019
Edited: Adam Danz on 19 Sep 2019
After some slight rearrangement of your code, I added a secton that optionally scatters the x coordinates around the centers of the boxes. Set the 'spread' to 0 to plot data points in the center of the boxes.
allData = {Data1; Data2; Data3};
h = boxplot(cell2mat(allData),group); % old version: h = boxplot([allData{:}],group);
set(h, 'linewidth' ,2)
set(gca,'XTickLabel', {'Data1'; 'Data2'; 'Data3'})
hold on
xCenter = 1:numel(allData);
spread = 0.5; % 0=no spread; 0.5=random spread within box bounds (can be any value)
for i = 1:numel(allData)
plot(rand(size(allData{i}))*spread -(spread/2) + xCenter(i), allData{i}, 'mo','linewidth', 2)
end
The x-scatter is random so the the x coordinates will differ each time the plot is created unless the rng seed is controlled.
  6 Comments
DM
DM on 29 Jun 2020
Edited: DM on 29 Jun 2020
Is there a way to make each data appear in a different colour instead all of them being pink?
Adam Danz
Adam Danz on 29 Jun 2020
The plot() command only allows you to assign one color per object. So you could plot the values within a loop where you can assign a different color on each iteration. Another method would be to use the scatter() function that allows you to assign different color for each point.

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