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Plotting Imaginary and Complex Data

When the arguments to plot are complex (i.e., the imaginary part is nonzero), All MATLAB graphics functions ignore the imaginary part except when plot is given a single complex data argument. For this special case, the command produces a plot of the real part versus the imaginary part. Therefore,

plot(Z)

where Z is a complex vector or matrix, is equivalent to

plot(real(Z),imag(Z))

For example, this statement plots the distribution of the eigenvalues of a random matrix using circular markers to indicate the data points.

plot(eig(randn(20,20)),'o','MarkerSize',6)

To plot more than one complex matrix, there is no shortcut; the real and imaginary parts must be taken explicitly.

Line Plots of Matrix Data

Plotting with Two Y-Axes

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