Error bars and legend order inconsistent?

Hi Matlab community,

I'm trying to create a line plot with error bars where the colour of the error bars and the colour of the lines vary based on a the value of the class (in this case a subsampling factor). However, I'm having two errors:

1. In the legend, the order of the 'patches' do not correspond to the order of the 'labels' - I have no option to do this manually so cannot define the label order manually. The lowest numbers are meant to correspond to the darkest colours.
2. Some of the patches in the legend show without error bars, whereas others do, despite the fact that errorbars are defined and plotted for each line.

I can't upload sample data unfortunately as the dataset is too large. I've included a sample of my code below as well as a screenshot showing the issue:

for j = 6:10
    
    Norm_Opt{j}= Optimal_Results{j}./Optimal_Results{11}; %Normalise optimal results
    Norm_Per25{j}=Per_25_Results{j}./Per_25_Results{11}; %Normalise 2.5% and 97.5% confidence intervals (improves visualisation)
    Norm_Per975{j}=Per_975_Results{j}./Per_975_Results{11};
    
    cmapUS = copper(US_FactorM); %Define colormap length based on maximum value

    if Output{j}.geo.US >0
        nUS = nUS +1
        US_Factor(nUS) = Output{j}.geo.US_Factor; %Extract subsampling factor (for FaceColor)
        
        subplot(3,1,1)
        plot(x,Norm_Opt{j},'Color',cmapUS(((US_Factor(nUS)/US_FactorM)*length(cmapUS)),:),'LineWidth',3)
       
        eUS(nUS)=errorbar(Norm_Opt{j},Norm_Per975{j});
        eUS(nUS).Color = cmapUS(((US_Factor(nUS)/US_FactorM)*length(cmapUS)),:);
        eUS(nUS).LineWidth = 2;
        
        axis tight
        daspect([0.1 1 1])
        
        lgdUS{nUS}=num2str(US_Factor(nUS)); %Format legend labels
        l = legend(lgdUS)
        l.FontSize = 14;
        hold on
    end
end

Any help would be much appreciated, thanks a lot!

Ben

Answer 1

[Star Strider]

It is difficult to follow your code.

Perhaps something like this —

plot(x,Norm_Opt{j},'Color',cmapUS(((US_Factor(nUS)/US_FactorM)*length(cmapUS)),:),'LineWidth',3, 'DisplayName',string(US_Factor(nUS)))

then after the loop:

legend('Location','best')

That should display everything correctly, however I cannot test it with your code without the data.

.

[Ben]

Thanks a lot Star - this worked! The only other thing I had to do was specifify 'HandleVisibility' as 'off' for the error bars to remove extra legend entries

[Star Strider]

As always, my pleasure!

Another way to do that would be to assign handles to the desired plot calls:

heb{j} = plot(x,Norm_Opt{j},'Color',cmapUS(((US_Factor(nUS)/US_FactorM)*length(cmapUS)),:),'LineWidth',3, 'DisplayName',,string(US_Factor(nUS));

and:

legend([heb{:}], 'Location','best')

Then only the legend 'DisplayName' strings associated with those plot calls would show.

That could work with your code, however I can’t test it to be certain.