Y axis in scientific form

Hello,

I want to plot Y axis in the scientific form and not in engineering form (es 1E4 and not 10^4), si it possible?

Answer 1

[Tommy]

How does this work for you?

ax = axes;
plot(ax, 1:10, (1:10).^10)

% get rid of 'x 10^N' in corner
ax.YAxis.Exponent = 0;

% get rid of 'x 10^N' formatting in individual labels
ytickformat(ax, '%f')

% get the labels
yticklabels = ax.YTickLabel;

% for each one, reformat to 'E+N' notation using sprintf
for ii = 1:numel(yticklabels)
    yticklabels{ii} = sprintf('%.0E', str2double(yticklabels{ii}));
end

% reassign the labels
ax.YTickLabel = yticklabels;

[sani]

what you suggested didn't present the Y axis exponentally, as for this plot I need the Y axis to be (1E0 1E2 1E4 and so on)

[Tommy]

The above code won't work for axes scaled logarithmically. This should work for either case (it's probably better, now that I think about it):

ax = axes('YScale', 'log', 'NextPlot', 'add');
plot(ax, 1:10, (1:10).^10)

% get the ticks
yticks = ax.YTick;
yticklabels = cell(numel(yticks),1);

% for each one, create a corresponding label with 'E+N' notation using sprintf
for ii = 1:numel(yticks)
    yticklabels{ii} = sprintf('%.0E', yticks(ii));
end

% assign the labels
ax.YTickLabel = yticklabels;

(edit) For more control over the exact format:

ax = axes('YScale', 'log', 'NextPlot', 'add');
plot(ax, 1:10, (1:10).^10)

% get the ticks
yticks = ax.YTick;
yticklabels = cell(numel(yticks),1);

% for each one, create a corresponding label with 'EN' notation using sprintf
for ii = 1:numel(yticks)
    e = floor(log10(yticks(ii)));
    b = yticks(ii) / 10^e;
    yticklabels{ii} = sprintf('%dE%d', b, e);
end

% assign the labels
ax.YTickLabel = yticklabels;

[sani]

thank you, this is exactly what I wanted!

Answer 2

[Walter Roberson]

If you are referring to the scale factor that sometimes get put up near the top of the Y axes, then the answer is that there is no known way to change the format of it. There are only ways to enable it or disable it or to change the basic power (e.g., you could force it to be 10^3 in which case the automatic axes labels could be in the tens).

In the case where you want something like that but what is provided automatically does not meet your needs, then you will probably need to text() what you want into place. You might need to set the axes 'clipping' to 'off'

It just might be possible to locate an internal text() object used for the exponent and modify it; that would take some investigation.

[sani]

thanks!