BreakAxis

Produces a plot who's y-axis skips to avoid unecessary blank space.

Description

BreakPlot(x,y,y_break_start,y_break_end,break_type)
Produces a plot who's y-axis skips to avoid unecessary blank space

INPUT
x
y
y_break_start
y_break_end
break_type
   if break_type='RPatch' the plot will look torn
      in the broken space
   if break_type='Patch' the plot will have a more
      regular, zig-zag tear
   if break_plot='Line' the plot will merely have
      some hash marks on the y-axis to denote the
      break

USAGE:
figure;
BreakPlot(rand(1,21),[1:10,40:50],10,40,'Line');
figure;
BreakPlot(rand(1,21),[1:10,40:50],10,40,'Patch');
figure;
BreakPlot(rand(1,21),[1:10,40:50],10,40,'RPatch');
figure;
x=rand(1,21);y=[1:10,40:50];
subplot(2,1,1);plot(x(y>=40),y(y>=40),'.');
set(gca,'XTickLabel',[]);
subplot(2,1,2);plot(x(y<=20),y(y<=20),'.');%

IT'S NOT FANCY, BUT IT WORKS.

• Acknowledgements: This submission has inspired the following:; BreakXAxis, Break Bar Plot, BreakPlot
• MATLAB release: MATLAB 6.5 (R13)

[Brett Shoelson]

Nice, useful function! Would be nice to have the same for breakxaxis. (With the same patch options.)

[Saral Gupta]

very efficient, and useful. Nice work

[Kelvin Chou]

Excellent! very helpful function!

[Mighty Jo]

Excellent,
Thank you

[Giuseppe Sanfilippo]

Well done, but It does not work when y is in a negative scale, i.e. y \in [-1000,0]

[Peter Lustig]

Thank you very much!

[Peter Lustig]

One small addition: If your y data has a large range and you want to skip a lot (e.g. several orders of magnitude), then the mid point might not be suitable for breaking. In my case the upper part got way too much range compared to the lower. Can easily be adjusted by tweaking the 'y_break_mid'. I used e.g.

y_break_mid= y_break_end - (y_break_end-y_break_start)./10;

Great code, helped a lot, Michael!