How can I set the histogram width?

I would like to set the histogram width in hist(), can anyone help? Thanks

Answer 1

[Wayne King]

It sounds like what you want to do is return the counts and bin centers from hist(). In other words, do not plot with hist(), rather user bar() to plot. The third input argument to bar() is the bar width.

 [N,X] = hist(randn(1000,1));
 bar(X,N,0.5)
 % the input 0.5 controls the bar width, it defaults to 0.8

[Ilaria Sani]

Thanks. What I wanted to ask was a purely "graphical question". hist() is more efficent than bar() in plotting a distribution because it allows bin settings, but I guess it doesn't allow graphical column-width setting.

[Ashim]

I have a question on the answer. i don't think we can set the width if we use the option in bar graph to use 'histc'. i want to end up in a histogram grouped together, with white background and a width of 0.3 but i can get them all at a time. Although this worked, but cannot adjust the width of the bar columns.

if true
  % code
hist(WS,bins,'w');
h = findobj(gca, 'Type', 'patch');
set(h, 'FaceColor', 'w');
end

Answer 2

[Wayne King]

If by histogram width, you mean the width of the bins, then you can do that by specifying the number of bins you use as an input argument; this is documented.

Or use histc() and specify the edges as a vector input.

Answer 3

[Ilaria Sani]

Sorry, with with I meant the width in the plot. So it's a"graphical" question.

Answer 4

[Wayne King]

You can simply modify the width of the plot

 hist(randn(1000,1))
 ax = gca;
 get(ax,'position')

Now you'll see a vector with 4 elements. The 4 elements are

[left bottom width height]

so add to the width value. You'll probably want to reduce the left value as well to keep the histogram "centered"

Answer 5

[Ilaria Sani]

I have tried to modify the vector from the menu "more proprieties". I can modify it, but nothing happens to the columns, no visual changes; the only one effect is a larger or narrower figure outline.

In other words: given this hstogram

hist([randn(1000,1), randn(1000,1)])

I don't want the coulmns to be so narrow and separated, how can I change this?

Thanks a lot.