MATLAB: Data Visualization

Name: MATLAB: Data Visualization
Author: Gabriel Popoola

Represent your data in new, visually legible ways

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Course: On-Demand

Welcome to the lesson on MATLAB's visualization toolbox. During this lesson, I'm gonna give you a brief introduction to the visualization toolbox, as well as show you how it's used. So, the first thing I want you to do is take a look at the tool strip, this area here. As you can see, we have three different tabs, HOME, PLOTS and APPS. The MATLAB visualization tools are located under PLOTS. So if you click that, you see that there's three areas. We have Selection, Plots and Options. So, the Selection will show you which variables you have selected from your workspace. The Plots will give you the options to plot them. And finally, the Options will allow you to select whether you want to continue to reuse the same figure, or generate a new figure every time you generate a new plot. And so, right now, as you can see, there's nothing selected. There's nothing to click other than the options to reuse a figure or use a new figure. For now, I'm just gonna select reuse the figure. And, what we need in order to do anything is to generate some data. But before I do that, I just want to go through the various options you have for plots. And so, if we click the drop down, as you can see, there's different categories for the plots and graphs. Some are 2D, some are 3D, some are complex, and some are a bit basic or the simple types of plots that you might wanna use. And so, if you hover over a particular plot, it'll show you a few things. So, the first thing is the name or the type of plot. And then you have the description and how to implement the plot if you were strictly using the command line. But today, I'm not gonna get into using the command line to generate these plots. And that's primarily because you can somewhat teach yourself how to do that using this toolbox. And I'll show you a brief example of that later on in this lesson, but for now, I want to pivot to generating data. And so, the first thing I'm gonna do here is create a variable X and I'm gonna set it equal to a set of random integers. And in order to generate these random integers, I need to use the randi function. And this function takes in the maximum integer, as well as the number of integers. And so, I'll make the maximum integer here 100, and I'll generate 1,000. And I'm gonna suppress this, so we don't have 1,000 integers printed out on the screen and select Enter. And as you can see, as soon as I did that the variable was automatically selected from the workspace here, and it shows up in the selection area. Now, if I click Away, it all goes back to gray. But, I'll click X right now. And now, if you click this drop down, you can see that the different types of plots are no longer grayed out. And one important thing to be mindful of, or just keep track of here, is that for the most part, when you look at a particular type of plot, the name of the plot is the same as the name of the function that's used to implement that plot. Of course, you have a few exceptions such as bar (stacked), where it has the parenthesis stacked, but if you highlight or hover over it, and you look at the description, you can see how it's actually implemented. And so, right now, I'm just gonna pick a random plot to show you exactly what happens when you generate a plot this way. So, I'm gonna go with the Contour. And, by clicking that, it generates a figure, and the window automatically comes up, and you can resize it, and as you can see here, it's just this greenish blue yellow visualization here. But, what I want you to be mindful of, is whenever you click a plot and it generates that plot, if you look at your command window, you can see here that it simply ran the command contour (X). And so, if for some reason you just decided you didn't want to work with the toolbox, you can reproduce the plot by just typing contour, then X. And since we're working with a thousand variables or values here, it's gonna to take a while to generate. But, as you can see, we have our plot again. Next up, I wanna add a new variable and I'm gonna set Y equal to the square root of X. And once again, I'm gonna suppress that. And here we have this 1000 by 1000 double. And, I want to show you in order to select multiple variables, you simply need to hold down control on your keyboard and click the additional variable. But, before I even continue, I'm gonna create another variable, Z, and set that equal to .5 or one-half of Y. And so now we have three variables. And so, when I click one variable and two variables, you can see the plots change or rather the plots available change. And so, when I click the third, the plots available change again. And so, basically what this is saying or indicating, is when you're working with multiple dimensions, there's certain plots that you can use and certain plots that you can't use. And so, as you can see here, working with three dimensions, I have primarily three dimensional figures. And so, if I were to click on swarm chart, for instance, it's gonna generate that. And, here we have our plot, and you can move it around and resize as needed. But, this is the general idea of how to use the visualization toolbar. This concludes this lesson. Thank you.

Intermediate Provider : Gabriel Popoola 3 Lessons · 26m in Arabic, German, English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Chinese

Course Description

Data visualization is an important aspect of data science and analysis. Given that data can come in many different forms and quantities, it is important that you are able to visualize data efficiently and effectively.

It is not uncommon for the audience, stakeholders, or interested parties to need clear insights on what is being reported. In such cases, it is important that results and insights are presented in such a way that they can be easily understood and digested by your target audience.

Represent your data in new, visually legible ways with this MATLAB module, in which you will learn about data visualization in MATLAB using the visualization toolbox, and how to generate different, legible figures representing your data and/or insights. These figures include histograms as well as line, scatter, and area plots. You will also learn the difference between selection, plots, and options in MATLAB, as well as how to load built-in data sets.

What You'll Learn

Use the MATLAB Visualizations App to represent data visually
Identify the requirements for generating different types of data plots in MATLAB
Create line and scatter plots in MATLAB
Generate histograms and area plots in MATLAB
Distinguish between selection, plots, and options in MATLAB
Load built-in data sets in MATLAB

Key Takeaways

Data visualization is an important aspect of data science and analysis, helping present results and insights so they are easily understood by the target audience.
This module teaches data visualization in MATLAB using the visualization toolbox to generate legible figures representing data and insights.
The figures covered include histograms as well as line, scatter, and area plots.
Learners explore the difference between selection, plots, and options in MATLAB and how to load built-in data sets.
The course builds skills in data visualization, graphical tools, information visualization, and scientific visualization with MATLAB.

Frequently Asked Questions

What will I learn in this MATLAB: Data Visualization course?

You will learn about data visualization in MATLAB using the visualization toolbox, how to generate different legible figures such as histograms and line, scatter, and area plots, the difference between selection, plots, and options in MATLAB, and how to load built-in data sets.

What lessons does this course include?

The course includes three lessons: MATLAB Visualizations App; Line and Scatter Plots; and Histograms and Area Plots.

What types of plots are covered?

The course covers histograms as well as line, scatter, and area plots.

What skills will I gain from this course?

You will gain skills in Data Visualization, Graphical Tools, Information Visualization, MATLAB, Scientific Visualization, and Visualization.

Who is this course for?

This module is for those who need to represent data in new, visually legible ways and present results and insights so they can be easily understood and digested by a target audience such as stakeholders or interested parties.