How can I create a plot with quaterly dates on the x-axis ?

Hi I have quaterly data from 1973.Q1-2013.Q4. I want to plot this with the quaterly time frame on the x-axis. How can I do this ?

Answer 1

[dpb]

dn=datenum(1973,1+[0:3:12*(2013-1973)].',1);  % make a sample time vector
[datestr(dn(1)) '<->' datestr(dn(end))]        % show what it spans
ans =
01-Jan-1973<->01-Jan-2013
plot(dn,randi(1000,size(dn)))  % plot some dummy date over the range
datetick('x','QQ-YYYY')        % format axes as time
xlim([dn(1) dn(end)])          % fit axes to range of actual data

You can adjust tick marks and format as desired; somewhat of a problem as the labels take up quite a lot of room but as demonstrated, the x-axis is plotted in date number range of floating point values and then transformed to display time by datetick

With the introduction of the new date/time data type, there's an overloaded plot function that handles that class of time inputs natively; I don't have the release so check the doc's...works generally the same way as the new class is also fundamentally a date number with just more resolution and builtin methods.

[Fox]

Thanks.