Adding error bars to a grouped bar plot
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Hi! I’m trying to plot a grouped bar graph with standard errors, and have managed this so far, which almost works but the SE are for some reasons plotted next to the bars rather than on them (see attached)? Any idea how to fix it? Thanks!
![](https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/uploaded_files/200273/image.jpeg)
err = [3, 3; 1, 3];
y=[69,123; 74, 62];
figure
bar(y)
set(gca, 'XTickLabel', {'Cats' 'Dogs'});
hold on
errorbar(y, err, '.')
ylabel('Mean Error');
ylim([20 140]);
legend('response to novel cats', 'response to novel dogs');
saveas(gcf,['bar_2', '.jpg'])
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Accepted Answer
Vishal Chaudhary
on 9 Jan 2019
The ability to specify that the "errorbar" function display the error bars inside the individual bars is not available in MATLAB. It displays errorbar at the center of each group.
To work around this issue, find the center of each bar and pass this data into "errorbar" with the respective error values.
ngroups = size(y, 1);
nbars = size(y, 2);
% Calculating the width for each bar group
groupwidth = min(0.8, nbars/(nbars + 1.5));
for i = 1:nbars
x = (1:ngroups) - groupwidth/2 + (2*i-1) * groupwidth / (2*nbars);
errorbar(x, y(:,i), err(:,i), '.');
end
hold off
4 Comments
CR
on 18 Jun 2020
This is great! Would it be possible to decrease the spacing between the grouped bars? Thanks again!
More Answers (2)
Steve Schaefer
on 11 Mar 2020
The code to create the below shown picture can be found in this MATLAB Answer:
![](https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/uploaded_files/276611/image.png)
2 Comments
Jonathan Cottet
on 19 Apr 2021
The code for the graph is not really displayed in the link you posted (categorical graph in your picture). Could you please post it here ?
Thanks in advance !
z8080
on 20 Jun 2023
@Steve Schaefer, I would second @Jonathan Cottet's request to please post that code, as it is in fact not to be found under the given link. Thanks!
Star Strider
on 20 Jun 2023
An example using properties available in prior and recent MATLAB releases is provided in Putting error bars on bar plot?
One of these approaches should work for all releases (at least after R2014b when ‘Handle Graphics 2’ appeared, and perhaps for earlier releases as well). The same general approach will also work for putting numbers or other text objects above or within the bars.
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