Getting Started

Imaginary and Complex Data

When the arguments to plot are complex, the imaginary part is ignored except when plot is given a single complex argument. For this special case, the command is a shortcut for a plot of the real part versus the imaginary part. Therefore,

plot(Z)

where Z is a complex vector or matrix, is equivalent to

plot(real(Z),imag(Z))

For example,

t = 0:pi/10:2*pi;
plot(exp(i*t),'-o')
axis equal

draws a 20-sided polygon with little circles at the vertices. The command,
axis equal, makes the individual tick mark increments on the x- and y-axes the same length, which makes this plot more circular in appearance.

Plotting Lines and Markers

Adding Plots to an Existing Graph