Types of Plots in Matlab Programming

There are various plots available in MATLAB that can be used to represent data in graphical form. This section illustrates some common plots and their functions to get the used.

Line Plots

Line plots gives a useful way to compare sets of data or track changes over time. User can plot the data in a 2-D or 3-D view using either a linear or a logarithmic scale. Also, user can plot expressions or functions over specific intervals.

Data Distribution Plots

Visualize the data distribution using plots such as histograms, pie charts, or word clouds. For example, use a histogram created to group data into bins and display the number of elements in each bin.

Discrete Data Plots

Helps in Visualization of discrete data using plots such as stem plots, bar graphs. For example, user can make a vertical or horizontal bar graph where the bar lengths are proportional to the values that they represent.

Polar Plots

Plots in polar coordinates

polarplot	Plot line in polar coordinates
polarscatter	Scatter chart in polar coordinates
polarhistogram	Histogram chart in polar coordinates
compass	Plot arrows emanating from origin
ezpolar	Easy-to-use polar coordinate plotter

Contour Plots

2-D and 3-D isoline plots

Contour	Contour plot of matrix
contourf	Filled 2-D contour plot
contourc	Low-level contour plot computation
contour3	3-D contour plot
contourslice	Draw contours in volume slice planes
clabel	Label contour plot elevations
fcontour	Plot contours

Vector Fields

Comet, compass, feather, quiver and stream plots

Feather	Plot velocity vectors
quiver	Quiver or velocity plot
compass	Plot arrows emanating from origin
quiver3	3-D quiver or velocity plot
streamslice	Plot streamlines in slice planes
streamline	Plot of 2-D or 3-D vector data to streamlines

Surface and Mesh Plots

Representing gridded data as surface and mesh plots

surf	Surface plot
surfc	Contour plot below a 3-D shaded surface plot
surface	Create surface object
surfl	Surface plot with colormap-based lighting
surfnorm	Compute and display 3-D surface normals
mesh	Mesh plot
meshc	Plot a contour graph under mesh graph
meshz	Plot a curtain around mesh plot
hidden	Remove hidden lines from mesh plot
fsurf	Plot 3-D surface
fmesh	Plot 3-D mesh
fimplicit3	Plot 3-D implicit function