MATLAB: How to plot with YYYYMM date format on x-axis

date plot yyyymmMATLAB

LS,

I would like to plot some data with dates on the horizontal axis. The dates are in YYYYMM format.

When I plot the data set, there is a small horizontal space between e.g. 200911 and 200912. However, there is a large horizontal space between e.g. 200912 and 201001. It is clear why this happens…

Does someone probably have a solution for this issue? Should i convert the YYYYMM format to a date format which matlab understands? How? Or does an option for equidistantial horizontal spacing in graphs exists?

Your help would be very much appreciated.

Best regards,

Frits

Best Answer

This would convert your dates in YYYYMM format to serial dates which would have the correct intervals between the dates.

x = [200911 200912 201001 201002];
serialDates = datenum(num2str(x(:)), 'yyyymm')

Confirm with this:

datestr(serialDates)

Related Solutions

MATLAB: Hi, i have two dates like 2013_12_28 and 2014_01_06, and i want to calculate the mean date (2014_01_01) which would be in the form of 2014.0014

md = mean(datenum({'2013_12_28', '2014_01_06'}, 'YYYY_mm_dd'));
dv = datevec(md);
days_into_year = md - datenum([dv(1),1,1]);

But once you have days_into_year you have to convert that into a year fraction, which requires careful definition of how long a "year" is. Is a "year" 365 days, always? Is a "year" 365.2421875 days? Is a "year" 365 days for non-leap years but 366 days for leap-years? If so then should it be 365 days for dates in the year before the leap day but 366 for dates on or after the leap day?

Converting to a specific date is much easier, and getting the result in terms of days is easy, but fraction of a year needs clarification.

MATLAB: Combining vectors of day, month and year into a single date vector

dates = datenum([year,month,day]);

Then you can plot your data vs. dates.

Finally, use datetick to change the format of your dates' axis.

For example:

datetick('x','mmmyy')

Best Answer

Related Solutions

MATLAB: Hi, i have two dates like 2013_12_28 and 2014_01_06, and i want to calculate the mean date (2014_01_01) which would be in the form of 2014.0014

MATLAB: Combining vectors of day, month and year into a single date vector

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