Histograms and keeping the scaling/binning

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Thu, 07/12/2012 - 07:08 am

I make two histograms with identical ranges and numbers of bins. Then I make a new wave with make/n=(nbins) newwave = hist1/hist2. I lose the scaling here (it seems to revert back to points on the x axis). So I tried to reapply it by using getaxis/w= bottom; setscale/I x, V_min, V_max, ; and finally setaxis/w= bottom, V_min, V_max.

This results in almost the right thing, but I can see that the binning has changed ever so slightly, which has drastic results for future computations. Is there a better way to do this, perhaps some way to preserve the x-axis from the very get-go?

Thanks, this has been driving me nuts so far.

EDIT: I know newwave isnt a histogram, and I have a feeling that is where I am going wrong. I use the exact same graphing display layout (bars etc) so it looks more or less the same, but yeah..
You might want to look at John Weeks' last reply at node 3206. Use Duplicate to preserve wave scaling, instead of Make, then redefine the contents of the duplicated wave.

Incidentally, you also run the risk of dividing by zero if 'hist2' has empty bins. If so, you will likely wind up with blank 'bins' on the graph of the quotient wave.

July 12, 2012 at 07:36 am - Permalink