Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Making a grid

I'm happy with this blog, I received my first comment (here) this week, thank you Naza Sundae.

Following with our online Scilab's tutorial, let's learn how to make grids, like the figure:

This type of graphs are very important for data visualization.

The first step is to define each point.
Look the example:

(1, 5) - (2, 5) - (3, 5) - (4, 5) - (5, 5)

(1, 4) - (2, 4) - (3, 4) - (4, 4) - (5, 4)

(1, 3) - (2, 3) - (3, 3) - (4, 3) - (5, 3)

(1, 2) - (2, 2) - (3, 2) - (4, 2) - (5, 2)

(1, 1) - (2, 1) - (3, 1) - (4, 1) - (5, 1)

The x-coordinates are the matrix:

X = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5;
1, 2, 3, 4, 5;
1, 2, 3, 4, 5;
1, 2, 3, 4, 5;
1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

And the y-coordinates are the matrix:

Y = [5, 5, 5, 5, 5;
4, 4, 4, 4, 4;
3, 3, 3, 3, 3;
2, 2, 2, 2, 2;
1, 1, 1, 1, 1]

So, we can use the meshgrid function, like presented in the following script:

-->x = meshgrid(1:5)
x =

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

-->y = meshgrid(5:-1:1)'
y =

5. 5. 5. 5. 5.
4. 4. 4. 4. 4.
3. 3. 3. 3. 3.
2. 2. 2. 2. 2.
1. 1. 1. 1. 1.

-->plot(x, y, 'k.-');

-->plot(x', y', 'k.-');

The result:


Now, I think it's interesting to upgrade our example.
Look the script:

-->t = 1:20;

-->x = meshgrid(t);

-->y = meshgrid(t($:-1:1))';

-->w = %pi/5;

-->s = sin(w*x);

-->plot(x, s + y, 'b.-');

-->plot(x', (s + y)', 'b.-');

The result:


Try to change the grid and look what happens.

5 comments:

  said...

Thank you for the post. I appreciate that people like you are out there publishing information. This helped me to learn scilab better. Also, props to using an open source OS +1

Filipe A. Barroso said...

I agree with the last comment, cheers!

And in the topic of learning.
What does the "$" at the line:
--> y = meshgrid(t($:-1:1))';

Thanks in advance.

Alex Carneiro said...

Dear Filipe, the '$' indicates the end of the vector 't'.

In this case, 't($:-1:1)' is the inverse of 't', look following:

t = [t(1) t(2) ... t($)]

t($:-1:1) = [t($) t($ - 1) ... t(1)]

You can use the '$' like a number, for example:

if length(t) = n then length(t($/2)) = n/2 (for 'n' is even)

Thanks for your comment.

Luis Ángel said...

Dear Sheep.

Following your examples, could you tell me please how to give additional attributes to each node of the grid? I mean, for example, how to give a pair of attributes of each node (its mass and its electric charge, for example). Thanks a lot.

Luis Ángel (México)

Alex Carneiro said...

Hi Luis, this post presents how to make grids like graphs, each data point has only position information ({x,y} coordinates). But if you need to add more information, you could only create more components for each point.

For example:
x_coordinates = ones(100, 1)*(1:100);
y_coordinates = (ones(100, 1)*(100:-1:1))';
q_electric = rand(100, 100);
w_mass = 10*rand(100, 100);

data(:,:,1) = x_coordinates;
data(:,:,2) = y_coordinates;
data(:,:,3) = q_electric;
data(:,:,4) = w_mass;


In the example, each point data(x,y,:) has four attributes: x and y coordinates, electric charge and mass, and you can upgrade it as you want to.

Regards