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Histogram Y axis to Logarithmic Scale

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Anthony
Anthony on 3 Aug 2011
Commented: Eric Rouviere on 11 Jul 2019
I trying to set the Y- axis of a histogram to Logarithimic Scale. I know I can use Y tick but I trying to figure out how I can get the best formulae for this I would be grateful for any help rendered.
hist(data(1:29196,3)) set(gca,'YTick',)

Answers (2)

the cyclist
the cyclist on 3 Aug 2011
set(gca,'YScale','log')
  3 Comments
Tim Marks
Tim Marks on 3 Apr 2017
I tried the cyclist's command
set(gca,'YScale','log')
on a histogram that I plotted in Matlab 2016b using the "histogram" command, and it worked like a charm. It kept the graph as a histogram, and just changed the y-axis to logarithmic scale, exactly as desired. Maybe it only works properly in recent versions of Matlab, but it did exactly what was needed.
Eric Rouviere
Eric Rouviere on 11 Jul 2019
You are using hist(). Try using histogram().

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Walter Roberson
Walter Roberson on 3 Aug 2011
The reason your histogram disappears is that the histogram draws each bar down to the value 0, and log(0) is -infinity, so the graphics engine chops off those lines.
Unfortunately changing this behavior is not easy if you require that hist() be used. When you use hist(), the drawn graphic is in the form of a patch. It is possible to set() new YData for the patch, but when you do so other internal aspects of the patch get changed and it ends up a mess.
What you are better off using is:
[n, xout] = hist(data(1:29196,3));
bar(xout, n, 'barwidth', 1, 'basevalue', 1);
set(gca,'YScale','log')
This will cause the bar graph to be drawn only from 1 upward instead of from 0 upward, and log(1) is not a problem to draw.
  1 Comment
Jamie
Jamie on 22 Jun 2018
This is great, thanks! I use basevalue of 0.1 so that single occurrences are visible.

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