A boxplot summarises a distribution as a box (the middle 50 percent of values) with whiskers and outlier points, and gnuplot computes it directly from raw data with set style boxplot. The script below compares the score distributions of two classes held in two columns of one file. In scores.dat, column 1 is a row…
The epslatex terminal splits a figure in two: gnuplot draws the graphics into an .eps file, and writes every piece of text — title, axis labels, legend — into a companion .tex file for LaTeX to typeset. The payoff is that figure text uses exactly the fonts and math typesetting of your paper, because LaTeX…
Gnuplot has two histogram routes: for raw measurements, bin the values yourself with a small bin() function and smooth frequency; for data that is already counted per category, use the built-in histogram plotting style. The binning method below is the one you need most often. The example uses values.dat — one measured value per line,…
Short answer: use pngcairo when the figure will be seen on a screen at a known size (web pages, slides, chat), and pdfcairo when it will be printed, zoomed or included in a LaTeX document. Both are Cairo terminals with the same drawing quality and the same font syntax — they differ in what kind…
Error bars need one extra data column: plot with the yerrorbars style and give three columns to using — x, y, and the error size. The script below plots five measurements with symmetric uncertainties. The file errors.dat holds the sample number, the measured value, and its uncertainty (lines starting with # are comments and are…
Three settings control gnuplot axes: set xrange and set yrange fix the visible window, set xtics and set ytics place the tick marks, and set logscale switches an axis to logarithmic spacing. This script combines all three on fast-growing data. The example uses growth.dat: a step number in column 1 and a rapidly growing count…
Every gnuplot curve is styled by four properties: its color (linecolor), width (linewidth), dash pattern (dashtype) and, for markers, its symbol (pointtype). You can set them per plot or save them as reusable line styles, as this script shows. set style line 1 linecolor rgb “#e41a1c” linewidth 2 pointtype 7 pointsize 1.2 set style line…
A gnuplot figure is annotated with four settings: set title for the heading, set xlabel and set ylabel for the axes, and set key for the legend. The script below shows all four, including font sizes, on a small data plot. The example plots a file sales.dat with month numbers in column 1 and revenue…
To plot a CSV file in gnuplot, tell gnuplot the separator is a comma, then name the file and the columns you want with using. The script below plots two temperature series from one CSV file, using the header row for the legend. Suppose measurements.csv looks like this — a header row followed by time…
Your first gnuplot plot takes four ideas: choose an output terminal, optionally name a file, label the axes, and call plot with a function. The script below draws a sine wave and saves it as a PNG image — you can run it unchanged in gnuplot 6.0. set terminal pngcairo size 800,600 enhanced font “Sans,12″…
