[Tex/LaTex] Latex Section header and figure won’t print on same page

floatsspacing

I'm trying to print a section that has only figures (no text aside from captions). I have a figure that clearly does not take up a whole page (it takes up half a page at most), but for some reason I get my section header "Model fitting" at the top of a page, then COMPLETE BLANK SPACE under it for the rest of the page, then on the next page the figure I want to include. This is the whole command that I am using for this section (Note I have two figures, but I don't care that the second figure also takes up an entire page):

\FloatBarrier
\subsection{Model fitting}
\begin{figure}
\includegraphics[width=0.5\textwidth]{IRrelation_fitted.pdf}
\includegraphics[width=0.5\textwidth]{IRrelation_Logfitted.pdf}
\caption{(left) plot of the IR voltage output as a function of distance with the fitted curve plotted over it.(right) plot of the log of IR voltage as a function of the log distance with the fitted curve plotted over it}
\label{fig: IR relationship}
\end{figure}

\begin{figure}
\includegraphics[width=0.5\textwidth]{IRrelation_diag01.pdf}
\includegraphics[width=0.5\textwidth]{IRrelation_diag02.pdf}
\includegraphics[width=0.5\textwidth]{IRrelation_diag03.pdf}
\includegraphics[width=0.5\textwidth]{IRrelation_diag04.pdf}
\caption{Diagnostic plots for linear regression used on IR sensor data as a function of distance. \textbf{top left:} Plot of residuals \textbf{top right:} quantile plot of residuals \textbf{bottom left:} scale-location plot, \textbf{bottom right:} Cook's distance (influence)}
\label{fig: IR diagnostics}
\end{figure}
\FloatBarrier

Best Answer

Without any text, float behaviour can seem pretty peculiar, LaTeX is just trying to make your document look nice. See great answer on How to influence the position of float environments like figure and table in LaTeX? by Frank Mittelbach.

For your specific problem, I used the placement specifier [!h] for both floats:

\FloatBarrier
\subsection{Model fitting}
\begin{figure}[!ht]
\includegraphics[width=0.5\textwidth]{IRrelation_fitted.pdf}
\includegraphics[width=0.5\textwidth]{IRrelation_Logfitted.pdf}
\caption{(left) plot of the IR voltage output as a function of distance with the fitted curve plotted over it.(right) plot of the log of IR voltage as a function of the log distance with the fitted curve plotted over it}
\label{fig: IR relationship}
\end{figure}
\begin{figure}[!ht]
\includegraphics[width=0.5\textwidth]{IRrelation_diag01.pdf}
\includegraphics[width=0.5\textwidth]{IRrelation_diag02.pdf}
\includegraphics[width=0.5\textwidth]{IRrelation_diag03.pdf}
\includegraphics[width=0.5\textwidth]{IRrelation_diag04.pdf}
\caption{Diagnostic plots for linear regression used on IR sensor data as a function of distance. \textbf{top left:} Plot of residuals \textbf{top right:} quantile plot of residuals \textbf{bottom left:} scale-location plot, \textbf{bottom right:} Cook's distance (influence)}
\label{fig: IR diagnostics}
\end{figure}
\FloatBarrier

Gives output:

LaTeX output

EDIT: I've just seen Extra page at beginning of appendix containing big figures with the same problem. It offers another solution using minipage

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Problems with alignment with landscape table

Instead of using table*, you could try tabular*. The *-form takes an additional <width> mandatory argument

\begin{tabular*}{<width>}{<column specification>}

which specifies the width of the tabular environment; in the regular form the width is determined by LaTeX from the contents of the tabular environment. Now, this might only help if you actually want to widen a table/tabular to a specific width. But, in your case you may need to shrink the table/tabular width. For this, there may be some tricks you can employ. However, some of these may be dependent on the journal requirements/specifications. Also, optimal solutions/choice might depend on the degree that your table extends outside the text block. I list a couple here by means of an example:

\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\begin{document}
Original\par
\begin{tabular}{*{7}{|c}|}
  Test 1 & Test 2 & Test 3 & Test 4 & Test 5 & Test 6 & Test 7
\end{tabular}

\bigskip Individual column separation modified via \verb|@{\hspace{<width>}}|\par
\begin{tabular}{*{7}{|@{\hspace{2pt}}c@{\hspace{2pt}}}|}
  Test 1 & Test 2 & Test 3 & Test 4 & Test 5 & Test 6 & Test 7
\end{tabular}

\bigskip Global column separation modified via \verb|\renewcommand{\tabcolsep}{<width>}|\par
{\renewcommand{\tabcolsep}{2pt}
\begin{tabular}{*{7}{|c}|}
  Test 1 & Test 2 & Test 3 & Test 4 & Test 5 & Test 6 & Test 7
\end{tabular}}

\bigskip Resized horizontally (keeping aspectratio) via \verb|\resizebox{<width>}{<height>}|\par
\resizebox{20em}{!}{\begin{tabular}{*{7}{|c}|}
  Test 1 & Test 2 & Test 3 & Test 4 & Test 5 & Test 6 & Test 7
\end{tabular}}

\bigskip Original\par
\begin{tabular}{*{7}{|c}|}
  Test 1 & Test 2 & Test 3 & Test 4 & Test 5 & Test 6 & Test 7
\end{tabular}
\end{document}

Differences in horizontal spacing when using the tabular environment

On a more semantic side of things, here are some suggestions to your code:

The use of \begin{center}...\end{center} is antiquated in LaTeX, and often produces unwanted vertical spacing even though this might not be the case with your tables. Rather use \centering. The l2tabu package gives some mention of this, plus other references to obsolete code for LaTeX2e.
Tabular columns specification can be simplified if you have many similarly-formatted columns. For this, using *{15}{c} is equivalent to ccccccccccccccc (as in the example above). Of course, there is a limit to this use, since *{2}{c} is less useful than cc. However, readibility is at play here as well as ease of subsequent modification.

[Tex/LaTex] Join figure and table on the same page

I gather that the figure should be at the very top of a page, to be followed immediately by the table environment. (Moreover, I'm taking for granted that the two environments will actually fit on a single page, right?)

You could achieve these objectives by loading the afterpage package and "encasing" the figure and table environments in an \afterpage{...} statement, as is shown in the following code fragment:

\afterpage{%    % defer execution until the next page break occurs anyway
   \begin{figure}[t!] % not "pt"
      \centering
      % remaining contents of figure environment
   \end{figure}
   \begin{table}[h!] % not t or b or p
      \centering
      % remaining contents of table environment
   \end{table}
} % end of argument of `\afterpage` command

I'm further assuming that there are no deferred figure and/or table environments already waiting to be typeset. If that were the case, you should issue a \clearpage instruction as the very first item in the argument of the \afterpage command. (Even if there are no accumulated deferred floats to take care of, there's no harm done by issuing a \clearpage instruction anyway at the start of the \afterpage material; it would simply be ignored by TeX.)

In addition, if the figure and table environments combined take up most of the page (say, more than 75% of the page), you may also want to issue a second \clearpage instruction, following the end of the table environment. This will tell LaTeX that you want to have just those two floats on the page in question.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Problems with alignment with landscape table

[Tex/LaTex] Join figure and table on the same page

Related Question