Histogram appearance and behavior - MATLAB (2024)

Data to distribute among bins, specified as a vector, matrix, multidimensional array, or categorical array. If Data is not a vector, then histogram treats it as a single column vector, Data(:), and plots a single histogram.

histogram ignores all NaN, NaT, and undefined categorical values. Similarly, histogram ignores Inf and -Inf values unless the bin edges explicitly specify Inf or -Inf as a bin edge. Although NaN, NaT, Inf, -Inf, and <undefined> values are typically not plotted, they are still included in normalization calculations that include the total number of data elements, such as 'probability'.

You can only specify categorical values for Data if the histogram object was originally created using categoricals.

Data Types: single | double | int8 | int16 | int32 | int64 | uint8 | uint16 | uint32 | uint64 | logical | categorical | datetime | duration

This property is read-only.

Bin values, returned as a numeric vector. If Normalization is 'count' (the default), then the kth element in Values specifies how many elements of Data fall in the kth bin interval (bin counts). The last bin includes values that are on either bin edge, but all other bins only include values that fall on the leading edge.

Depending on the value of Normalization, the Values property can instead contain a normalized variant of the bin counts.

Bin counts, specified as a vector. Use this input to pass bin counts to histogram when the bin counts calculation is performed separately and you do not want histogram to do any data binning.

The length of counts must be equal to the number of bins.

Compared to the Values property, BinCounts is not normalized. If Normalization is 'count', then Values and BinCounts are equivalent.

Example: histogram('BinEdges',-2:2,'BinCounts',[5 8 15 9])

Example: histogram('Categories',{'Yes','No','Maybe'},'BinCounts',[22 18 3])

Selection mode for bin counts, specified as 'auto' or 'manual'. The default value is 'auto', so that the bin counts are automatically computed from Data and BinEdges.

If you specify BinCounts, then BinCountsMode is automatically set to 'manual'. Similarly, if you specify Data, then BinCountsMode is automatically set to 'auto'.

Transparency of histogram bar edges, specified as a scalar value in the range [0,1]. A value of 1 means fully opaque and 0 means completely transparent (invisible).

Example: histogram(X,'EdgeAlpha',0.5) creates a histogram plot with semi-transparent bar edges.

Series index, specified as a positive integer or "none". This property is useful for reassigning the face colors of Histogram objects so that they match the colors of other objects.

By default, the SeriesIndex property of a Histogram object is a number that corresponds to its order of creation, starting at 1. MATLAB uses the number to calculate indices for assigning colors when you call plotting functions. The indices refer to the rows of the arrays stored in the ColorOrder property of the axes. Any objects in the axes that have the same SeriesIndex number will have the same color.

A SeriesIndex value of "none" corresponds to a neutral color that does not participate in the indexing scheme.

How Manual Color Assignment Overrides SeriesIndex Behavior

To manually control face color, set the FaceColor property of the Histogram object to a color value, such as a color name or an RGB triplet.

When you manually set the face color of a Histogram object, MATLAB disables automatic color selection for that object and allows your color to persist, regardless of the value of the SeriesIndex property.

To enable automatic selection again, set the SeriesIndex property to positive integer, and set the FaceColor property to "auto".

In some cases, MATLAB sets the SeriesIndex value to 0, which also disables automatic color selection.

Text used by the legend, specified as a character vector. The text appears next to an icon of the histogram.

Example: 'Text Description'

For multiline text, create the character vector using sprintf with the new line character \n.

Example: sprintf('line one\nline two')

Alternatively, you can specify the legend text using the legend function.

If the DisplayName property does not contain any text, then the legend generates a character vector. The character vector has the form 'dataN', where N is the number assigned to the histogram object based on its location in the list of legend entries.

If you edit interactively the character vector in an existing legend, then MATLAB updates the DisplayName property to the edited character vector.

Data tip content, specified as a DataTipTemplate object. You can control the content that appears in a data tip by modifying the properties of the underlying DataTipTemplate object. For a list of properties, see DataTipTemplate Properties.

For an example of modifying data tips, see Create Custom Data Tips.

This property is read-only.

Type of graphics object, returned as either 'histogram' or 'categoricalhistogram'. Use this property to find all objects of a given type within a plotting hierarchy, such as searching for the type using findobj.