Matlab histogram scale BinEdges figure

Question

I want to use MATLAB histogram to bin the largest values in my dataset into one bin so they are visible on the y axis, there are very few compared to the smaller numbers. I can use BinEdges to group the numbers greater than 4.4 into one bin, but, I would like the bin in the figure to be visually the same width as the rest of the bins. That is, shrink the scale on the X axis but only for the part between 4.4 and 10. I can't log scale the data. Is there a way to scale the axis, or break it between 4.4 and 10?

Myhistogram=histogram(mydata, 'FaceColor', 'r', 'Normalization', 'probability', 'BinEdges', [0 0.1:0.05:4.4 10]);

Answer 1

There are two ways to achieve this:

1. The super-easy way: If you just want to bin everything from 4.4 and higher (even past 10), then just put Inf instead of 10 in the last bin edge:

   Myhistogram = histogram(mydata, 'FaceColor', 'r', ...
                                   'Normalization', 'probability', ...
                                   'BinEdges', [0 0.1:0.05:4.4 Inf]);
   

   and here's what I got (using mydata = 1+1.5.*randn(1,10000);):

   

   Note that this simply cuts the x-axis off at a nice point! If you extend the x-axis limit, you will see a last bin like in your example that just keeps going. If you actually want a finite last bin, then...

2. Bin first, then plot: You can first do your binning using histcounts, then display the results with histogram and an altered set of edges:

   [N, edges] = histcounts(mydata, 'Normalization', 'probability', ...
                                   'BinEdges', [0 0.1:0.05:4.4 10]);
   histogram('BinEdges', [edges(1:end-1) 4.45], 'BinCounts', N, 'FaceColor', 'r');
   

   Notice I removed the last element of edges and added a value of 4.45 to make the last bin the same width as the previous ones. And here's the histogram (with the same data from option 1):