How can I add dates to bar charts when the data I am plotting are matrices?

I am trying to plot a matrix of N * 7 elements in a bar chart. N are different dates for which I have 7 variables under study. If I have N around 8, the graph looks nice and it shows what I want. Namely, the date for the group of variables on the x axis. However, if I have N = 20 or bigger it only shows the first five dates spanning the whole x-axis.

The code I am using right now is the following:

   width = 6;     % Width in inches
  height = 3;    % Height in inches

%FIGURE 1: Sectors Jump Days
fig1=figure(1);
pos = get(gcf, 'Position');
set(gcf, 'Position', [pos(1) pos(2) width*100, height*100])
bar(AverageTime)
set(gca,'XTickLabel',dayIndjumpStr)
legend('Primary','Manufacturing','Transport','Trade','Finance','Services','PA')

and dayIndjumpstr is a cell array. Thank you very much.

Answer 1

[BhaTTa]

@Alessandro Pollastri, it seems like the issue you're encountering is related to the x-axis tick labels not displaying all the dates when N is large. This is a common problem when plotting a large number of categories on the x-axis. Here's how you can address it:

1. Rotate the x-axis labels: Rotating the labels can help fit more labels into the space.
2. Set the x-axis ticks manually: If you have too many dates, you might want to display fewer labels for better readability.
3. Increase the figure size: Making the figure larger can sometimes help accommodate more labels.

Here's an updated version of your code incorporating these suggestions:

% Example data initialization

N = 20; % Number of dates

AverageTime = rand(N, 7); % Random data for demonstration purposes

% Example date labels

dayIndjumpStr = arrayfun(@(x) datestr(now + x, 'mm/dd/yyyy'), 0:N-1, 'UniformOutput', false);

% Plotting

width = 10; % Increased width in inches for better spacing

height = 5; % Increased height in inches

fig1 = figure(1);

pos = get(gcf, 'Position');

set(gcf, 'Position', [pos(1) pos(2) width*100, height*100]);

bar(AverageTime);

% Rotate x-axis labels for better readability

xtickangle(45);

% Set the x-axis labels

set(gca, 'XTick', 1:length(dayIndjumpStr), 'XTickLabel', dayIndjumpStr);

legend('Primary', 'Manufacturing', 'Transport', 'Trade', 'Finance', 'Services', 'PA');