Simplest way to add a legend to the groups of a scatter plot

87 views (last 30 days)
Here is a trivial scatter plot that uses the default marker size (S=[]) and a vector C to assign three colors according to the current colormap.
M = magic(3);
S = [];
C = [1;1;1;2;2;2;3;3;3];
figure
scatter(M(:),sort(M(:)),S,C,'filled')
Is there a simple way to create a legend to the three colors?

Accepted Answer

bym
bym on 5 Feb 2013
Edited: bym on 5 Feb 2013
gscatter(M(:),sort(M(:)),C)

More Answers (1)

ChristianW
ChristianW on 5 Feb 2013
Without gscatter fcn:
[~, I] = unique(C);
p = findobj(gca,'Type','Patch');
legend(p(I),'X','Y','Z')
  1 Comment
Anton
Anton on 9 Apr 2014
I'd like to add a correction to this solution, since it doesn't work properly in my case (8.2.0.701 (R2013b)). The problem appears, when the number of elements corresponding to different colors is not the same, for instance:
C = [1;1;1;1;2;3;3;3;3];
As far as I understand, order of handles provided by findobj is inverted: point corresponding to the first element of M has the last position in the array p.
I suggest the following solution:
[~, I] = unique(C); %
I = length(C) - I(length(I):-1:1);
p = findobj(gca,'Type','Patch');
legend(p(I),'X','Y','Z');

Sign in to comment.

Products

Community Treasure Hunt

Find the treasures in MATLAB Central and discover how the community can help you!

Start Hunting!