Creating Bins in a Histogram

I have a data set with the first column being the years and the second column being the distances. I need to create a histogram that bins how many of these distances occur during the same year, and then occurring every 10 years. (For example, 1880-1890 0, 1890-1900 1, 1900-1910 1).

I have attached the text file.

Answer 1

[Star Strider]

You have one year recorded for each distance, so do the histogram on the years. This doesn’t account for the distances (I’m not exactly certain how to fit them into a histogram by year in the absence of plot3, if you want to somehow include them), but will plot the histogram of the discoveries by year and decade.

The code:

fidi = fopen('jgillis16 oo20copy.txt', 'rt');
Dc = textscan(fidi, '%f%f', 'CollectOutput',1, 'TreatAsEmpty','~');
fclose(fidi);
D = cell2mat(Dc);
years = D(:,1);
distances = D(:,2);

yrbin = [min(years):max(years)]-0.5;
dcbin = 10*[floor(min(years)/10) : 1 :  floor(max(years)/10)]+5;

figure(1)
subplot(2,1,1)
hist(years, yrbin)
grid
subplot(2,1,2)
hist(years, dcbin)
grid

Answer 2

[Image Analyst]

The data you posted really doesn't have enough observations per decade to make a good histogram. There are just a handful per decade and usually only one or 2 per year. Nonetheless, you can use hist3() in the Stats toolbox to give counts per decade, and then per year in each decade.

[jgillis16]

I would've used hist3, except I dont have the stats toolbox. Any other suggestions?