MATLAB: How to add a table (independent of fig data) under figure

figureguilegendMATLABplotsubplottableuitable

I want to add a a table (example table below) under one of my figures. I can't use legends because the data for the figure and the table aren't parallel to one another, the table is just a detailed explanation of other components.

Screen Shot 2019-06-12 at 10.23.30 AM.png

Best Answer

In addition to Jan's UI table suggestion, you could convert the table to a character array and use text() to plot the array on an invisible axes. Here's a demo.

% Create table
LastName = {'Sanchez','Johnson','Danz'}; 
Age = [38,43,40]; 
Height = [71, 69, 71]; 
T = table(LastName',Age',Height','VariableNames',{'LastName','Age','Height'}); 
% plot some data in the main axes
figure()
axes('position',[.1,.4,.8,.5])
plot(Age,Height,'o')
xlabel('Age')
ylabel('Height'); 
% Convert Table to cell to char array
tableCell = [T.Properties.VariableNames; table2cell(T)]; 
tableCell(cellfun(@isnumeric,tableCell)) = cellfun(@num2str, tableCell(cellfun(@isnumeric,tableCell)),'UniformOutput',false); 
tableChar = splitapply(@strjoin,pad(tableCell),[1;2;3;4]);
% Add axes (not visible) & text (use a fixed width font)
axes('position',[.1,.1,.8,.2], 'Visible','off')
text(.2,.95,tableChar,'VerticalAlignment','Top','HorizontalAlignment','Left','FontName','Consolas');

If you'd like to implement Jan's suggestion to insert a UI table, this should get you started (following the example above).

uit = uitable('Data', table2cell(T),'ColumnName',T.Properties.VariableNames,...
    'Units', 'Normalized', 'Position',[0.2,0.05,0.6,0.25]);

Related Solutions

MATLAB: Create a table next to a graph on figure

A table object can't be put in a figure and, AFAIK, it's not possible to redirect command window output to a figure other than by preparing an image independently of the content desired.

But, you can put the uitable on subplot; you used wrong coordinate system -- I reoriented it to a 2x1 format instead of 1x2, but if your data fit more better the other way, you can easily revert.

hAx=subplot(2,1,1);                                                             % set subplot area
hUI=uitable('Data',T{:,:},'ColumnName',T.Properties.VariableNames,...           
'RowName',T.Properties.RowNames,'Units', 'Normalized', 'Position',hAx.Position);% set table on top
delete(hAx)                     % no need for the axes
hAx=subplot(2,1,2);             % make the other axes
plot(x,y)                       % and plot into them

results in

Your table doesn't have enough data to take up the whole area of the axes, but you can see the outline of the area the top axes laid out.

I didn't try with nexttile; I presume same thing will happen.

MATLAB: How to re-code numeric variables in a table to strings

JLC, you say "string", but it's very likely that you would be bettter off with categorical variables. Given you're original sample data ...

>> Var1 = [1; 2; 1; 2; 2; 1; 1];
>> Var2 = [2; 2; 1; 1; 1; 2; 1];
>> Var3 = [32.1; 34.6; 56.7; 65.3; 78.6; 23.4; 43.1];
>> t = table(Var1,Var2,Var3)
t =
  7×3 table
    Var1    Var2    Var3
    ____    ____    ____
     1       2      32.1
     2       2      34.6
     1       1      56.7
     2       1      65.3
     2       1      78.6
     1       2      23.4
     1       1      43.1
... here's what you probably want to do:
>> t.Var1 = categorical(t.Var1,1:2,{'Male' 'Female'});
>> t.Var2 = categorical(t.Var2,1:2,{'Old' 'Young'});
>> t
t =
  7×3 table
     Var1     Var2     Var3
    ______    _____    ____
    Male      Young    32.1
    Female    Young    34.6
    Male      Old      56.7
    Female    Old      65.3
    Female    Old      78.6
    Male      Young    23.4
    Male      Old      43.1

A few other things:

Don't name your table "Table". It will come back to bite you eventually.
No reason to concatenate [Var1,Var2,Var3] and then call array2table, which just pulls them apart. Call table directly.
Your "desired" result seems to have Var3 as a cell array, each cell containing a scalar double, You definitely don't want that.
It's possible to convert the entire table to a cell array and work on it and convert it back, as shown by ImageAnalyst. But you can work on the table directly as I showed above. The "Conversion to double from cell is not possible." errors you saw are because, as IA says, you were assigning text to only some elements of a double variable in the table. You need to assign to t.Var1 without subscripting. My code above shows that as part of converting to categorical.
If you really do want strings, do it like this:

genders = {'Male'; 'Female'}; t.Var1 = genders(t.Var1);
ages = {'Male'; 'Female'}; t.Var2 = ages(t.Var2);

Best Answer

Related Solutions

MATLAB: Create a table next to a graph on figure

MATLAB: How to re-code numeric variables in a table to strings

Related Question