File Exchange Pick of the Week

August 28th, 2007

Heat maps in MATLAB

Here at The MathWorks we are always concerned with useful ways of displaying data. A heat map is a graphical representation of data where the values taken by a variable in a two-dimensional map are represented as colors. This is something that is natural for an image, and indeed we have had that in IMTOOL for quite sometime now.

imtool.jpg

This week’s pick shows how to make a heat map in MATLAB for your own data. This heat map will scale nicely so that the text is always the right size. As a bonus, this code also used created a published m-file to make a nice html document showing how to use the code.

By Doug Hull

10:27 UTC | Posted in Uncategorized | Permalink |

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4 Responses to “Heat maps in MATLAB”

  1. Markus replied on August 29th, 2007 at 03:48 UTC :

    Yesterday I read your blog, today I needed exactly the function heatmaptext. Great!

  2. Doug replied on August 29th, 2007 at 07:43 UTC :

    I have found that the more data visualizations I know, the more likely I am to “need” them. Glad this new trick helped.

    Doug

  3. JerBen replied on August 29th, 2007 at 13:40 UTC :

    Hi Doug,

    Love the blog and videos. It really helps to see someone else using matlab.

    If you are looking for some great insight into ways to visualize data: check out Tutfe: http://www.edwardtufte.com His books and seminar are excellent.

    JerBen

  4. Doug replied on August 30th, 2007 at 07:39 UTC :

    JerBen,

    We are very familiar with Tufte here at the MathWorks, many of us go to his excellent one day seminar when he come to Boston on tour. His three major books are on my bookshelf right in front of me.

    Doug

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