HERRORBAR

Horizontal errorbar plot.

Description

HERRORBAR Horizontal Error bar plot.
   HERRORBAR(X,Y,L,R) plots the graph of vector X vs. vector Y with horizontal error bars specified by the vectors L and R. L and R contain the left and right error ranges for each point in X. Each error bar is L(i) + R(i) long and is drawn a distance of L(i) to the right and R(i) to the right the points in (X,Y). The vectors X,Y,L and R must all be the same length. If X,Y,L and R are matrices then each column produces a separate line.
 
   HERRORBAR(X,Y,E) or HERRORBAR(Y,E) plots X with error bars [X-E X+E].
   HERRORBAR(...,'LineSpec') uses the color and linestyle specified by the string 'LineSpec'. See PLOT for possibilities.
   
   Example:
      x = 1:10;
      y = sin(x);
      e = std(y)*ones(size(x));
      herrorbar(x,y,e)

History notice:
This code was originally posted to the newsgroup, comp.soft-sys.matlab, by me. In 2003 Greg Aloe (The MathWorks) rightfully decided to take ownership, after several unsuccesfull attempts to contact me, and put it on the FEX so that others could benefit from it.
In 2006 I contacted Greg Aloe and we decided to return ownership to me.
I like to thank him for his efforts. Jos

• Acknowledgements: This submission has inspired the following:; errorbar_x
• MATLAB release: MATLAB 6.5 (R13)
• Other requirements: This function should work with at least MATLAB 5.2 (R10) and later.

[David Koski]

 

[Troy Goodson]

I looked at a few of the errorbar functions here. I really like that this is based on the included errorbar.m function as I don't have to learn new input arguments. The only things I think are missing are

- an option to do both horizontal and vertical error bars.

- an option to change the size of the tees on the error bars (MathWorks' errorbar.m doesn't have this, either)

[david wang]

very good, you can use
errorbar(x,y,ex);
hold on;
herrorbar(x,y,ey);
to have both horizontal and verical error bars created.

[Stefan Schlamp]

 

[Bob Wood]

good.
works like errorbar.

[Jonathan Ashmore]

its great, worked first time, thanx heaps, has saved me a whole lot of hassle

[Rem Z]

Not robust to log axes.

[Boh Ruffin]

 

[Carlos Vargas]

Right waht I need, it also saved me a lot of trouble.

[Ted R]

This function works exactly as advertised. Use it!

[Rebecca Vislay-Meltzer]

This rocks!! Use it with errorbar to plot both x and y error bars. I've had issues with "errorbarxy" function.

[Josh F]

Good stuff. You saved my thesis.

[Eugene Tan]

Would like to recommend a change in the code

tee = (max(x(:))-min(x(:)))/100;

changed to using some average of the given error:

tee = mean([u; l])/3;

This will then accomodate single points with errors. You can do the same in the for Matlab's "errorbar" function.

[C L]

excellent. i have been trying to do this for ages. thankyou.

[David Swa]

Nice job, this is a very useful tool. Dont forget you can overlay graphs to get both x and y errorbars.

[B L]

Very good. Thanks

[Nadya V]

Good job! Thank you.

[Steven Shimizu]

very good, except you can't just enter the value of the error, (i.e. herrorbar(x,y,0.1), unlike with errorbar. Instead, you have to create a vector of all the same values.

[Jos vdG]

To Steven Shimizu:
thanks for your rating. This submission is based on the errorbar function in R10, which does not expand scalar inputs. This feature has only been introduced in more recent releases (>R13).

[Seth G.]

Works as described

[David Sterling]

Nice work. Currently won't put an error bar on a single point though... How about changing line 103 to be something like:

tee = max(0.01, (max(y(:))-min(y(:)))/100);

so that there is a default tee height for single points. More generally you might set default tee height to some function of Ylim so error bars show up no matter the Y scale.

[Anindo Roy]

Great code. I had a question: is there any MATLAB code out there which allows one to errorbars on a bar plot (like Excel does)?
Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

[Josh Hanson]

Nice. Thank you

[S I]

 

[Aniruddha Sengupta]

Certain specifications, such as 'LineWidth', don't seem to work with "herrorbar" but work perfectly with "errorbar".

[Jos (the author)]

Dear Aniruddha Sengupta, these incongruencies between errorbar and herrorbar are most likely due to version differences.

[philippe chassot]

 

[Kim Hansen]

PLEASE PLEASE Help

I am almost about to give up. How do I remove those crappy connection lines that herrorbar produces. In the normal errorbar i can just write

errorbar(x,y,e,'LineStyle','none')

where e offcourse is the error on the y values which in my case should be added to the x values. So I really want the command to be like this

herrorbar(x,y,e,'LineStyle','none')

but that does not work.
Please help

[Jordan]

How do I put vertical end markers on my horizontal error bars? The code worked great to put them in but I have data points that overlap substantially so I need end markers to show their bounds.

thanks

[Andrew Stephenson]

How do I go about changing the colour to something other than the default 'k, r, g, b' values? When using the errorbar command I can simply type

erroarbar(x,y,ex,'.', 'color',[0.5, 0.7, 1])

but this doesn't work when using herrorbar.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[Jos (10584)]

@Jordan, @ Andrew
Note that HERRORBAR is based on errorbar R13. As a work around you can get the handle:

   h = herrorbar(x,y,ex) ;

and modify its properties using SET. For instance,

  set(h,'color',[0.5 0.7 1])

[J B]

great, but can one change 'linewidth'?...or shall i give up trying!

[Jos (10584)]

@ J B. Please see my comment of 10 dec 2009:

h = errorbar(x,y,ex) ;
set(h,'linewidth',2)

[J B]

Has anyone had any success when using the herrorbar function of plotting thin errorbars (i.e. linewidth = 1) yet with a thick line (i.e. linewidth =2) conecting plotted points?

[Jos (10584)]

@ J B
You can modify the two handles returned by herrorbar separately, as in:

h = errorbar(x,y,ex) ;
set(h(1),'color','r') ;
set(h(2),'linewidth',2) ;

[J B]

 

[Shirley]

It works great, but I have one question: How can I get bigger end markers?

[Juha]

Messes legend if you use different markers and legend. Try this example and you'll know what I mean:

herrorbar(22, 20, 2.74, 'o')
hold on;
herrorbar(21, 26, 2.63, 'p')
legend('test1', 'test2')

[Jos (10584)]

@Juha, it is ill-advised to use legend that way. Better get the indices of the plots and use them to create a proper legend.
Also note that this function was written for ML13, and therefore returns 2 handles instead of 1. Use this to your advantage!

h1 = herrorbar(22, 20, 2.74, 'o')
hold on;
h2 = herrorbar(21, 26, 2.63, 'p')
legend([h1(2) h2(2) h2(1)],{'test1', 'test2','error of test2'})

[Dan]

Nicely done - though I concur with previous problems concerning the height of tee for single points (or multiple points at the same y-value). My work around was to allow y to be longer than x, then clip y to y([1 : length(x)]), but this won't work for non-vector input.

[Carlos]

To remove the connecting lines just change
line 148 of the mfile to:
h = [h;plot(x,y,symbol,'LineStyle','none')];

[Jos (10584)]

@Carlos, to avoid modifying the file, you can easily change the linestyles afterwards:
h = herrorbar(...) ;
set(h(2), 'linestyle', 'none') ;

[Gerry]