fewerbins

Decrease number of histogram bins

Syntax

N = fewerbins(h)

N = fewerbins(h,direction)

Description

N = fewerbins(h) decreases the number of bins in histogram h by 10% (rounded down to the nearest integer) and returns the new number of bins.

For bivariate histograms, this decreases the bin count in both the x and y directions.

N = fewerbins(h,direction), where h must be a histogram2 object, only decreases the number of bins in the dimension specified by direction. The direction option can be 'x', 'y', or 'both'. The default value is 'both'.

Examples

Decrease Number of Histogram Bins

Plot a histogram of 1,000 random numbers and return a handle to the histogram object.

x = randn(1000,1);
h = histogram(x)

h = 
  Histogram with properties:

             Data: [1000x1 double]
           Values: [3 1 2 15 17 27 53 79 85 101 127 110 124 95 67 32 27 16 6 6 4 1 2]
          NumBins: 23
         BinEdges: [-3.3000 -3.0000 -2.7000 -2.4000 -2.1000 -1.8000 -1.5000 -1.2000 -0.9000 -0.6000 -0.3000 0 0.3000 0.6000 0.9000 1.2000 1.5000 1.8000 2.1000 2.4000 2.7000 3 3.3000 3.6000]
         BinWidth: 0.3000
        BinLimits: [-3.3000 3.6000]
    Normalization: 'count'
        FaceColor: 'auto'
        EdgeColor: [0 0 0]

  Use GET to show all properties

Use fewerbins to decrease the number of bins in the histogram.

fewerbins(h);
fewerbins(h)

ans = 
18

Input Arguments

h — Input histogram

histogram object | histogram2 object

Input histogram, specified as a histogram or histogram2 object.

h cannot be a categorical histogram.

direction — Direction to decrease number of bins

'both' (default) | 'x' | 'y'

Direction to decrease the number of bins, specified as 'x', 'y', or 'both'. Specify 'x' or 'y' to only decrease the number of bins in that direction while leaving the number of bins in the other direction constant.

Output Arguments

N — Number of bins

scalar | vector

Number of bins, returned as a scalar or vector. N is the new number of bins for the histogram after increase. For bivariate histogram plots, N is a two-element vector, [nx ny].

Version History

Introduced in R2014b