MATLAB Function Reference

pareto - Pareto chart

GUI Alternatives

To graph selected variables, use the Plot Selector in the Workspace Browser, or use the Figure Palette Plot Catalog. Manipulate graphs in plot edit mode with the Property Editor. For details, see Plotting Tools — Interactive Plotting in the MATLAB^® Graphics documentation and Creating Graphics from the Workspace Browser in the MATLAB Desktop Tools documentation.

Syntax

pareto(Y) pareto(Y,names) pareto(Y,X) H = pareto(...)

Description

Pareto charts display the values in the vector Y as bars drawn in descending order. Values in Y must be nonnegative and not include NaNs. Only the first 95% of the cumulative distribution is displayed.

pareto(Y) labels each bar with its element index in Y and also plots a line displaying the cumulative sum of Y.

pareto(Y,names) labels each bar with the associated name in the string matrix or cell array names.

pareto(Y,X) labels each bar with the associated value from X.

pareto(ax,..) plots a Pareto chart in existing axes ax rather than GCA.

H = pareto(...) returns a combination of patch and line object handles.

Examples

Example 1:

Examine the cumulative productivity of a group of programmers to see how normal its distribution is:

codelines = [200 120 555 608 1024 101 57 687];
coders = 
{'Fred','Ginger','Norman','Max','Julia','Wally','Heidi','Pat'};
pareto(codelines, coders)
title('Lines of Code by Programmer')

Example 2:

Generate a vector, X, representing diagnostic codes with values from 1 to 10 indicating various faults on devices emerging from a production line:

X = min(round(abs(randn(100,1)*4))+1,10);

Plot a Pareto chart showing the frequency of failure for each diagnostic code from the most to the least common:

pareto(hist(X))

Remarks