MATLAB: How to get multiple groups plotted with histogram

barsdata setsgroupinggroupshistogram

With hist, the columns of an input matrix would be interpreted as different data sets and the frequency bars grouped per bin:
hist(rand(20,4))
How to get this behaviour with the new histogram function that is supposed to supercede hist?
histogram(rand(20,4))

Best Answer

As I suggested in this answer, I think the best you can do is to get the bin counts using the histcounts command, and then use the bar command to plot:

Here is an example.

rng 'default'

data1 = randn(20,1);
data2 = randn(30,1);
data3 = randn(40,1);
data4 = randn(50,1);

edges = -4:1:4;

h1 = histcounts(data1,edges);
h2 = histcounts(data2,edges);
h3 = histcounts(data3,edges);
h4 = histcounts(data4,edges);

figure
bar(edges(1:end-1),[h1; h2; h3; h4]')

Just as an FYI, I do think there is good reason to avoid the side-by-side histogram, which is that the bins do not line up where the actual data are, so it can be misleading. I speculate that this is why MathWorks eliminated this option.

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