How to assign diffrent colors and shapes to diffirent groups in a plot?

Hello, I'm trying to make a plot containing multiple groups, and each group has multiple values, but I don't know how to give different groups different colors and shapes

here's an example of my code, in this case I want to assign diffirent colors and shaples to different groups (A,B,C,D,E).

Many thanks!

clear;clc;close all;
Group = {'A','B','C','D','E'};
C3 = cellstr(Group); % convert cell to string
C4 = categorical(C3);% convert string to categorical 
a = [1; 2; 3]; b = [4; 5; 6]; c = [6; 7; 8]; d = [9; 10; 11]; e = [12;13; 14];
data=[a,b,c,d,e];
plot(data, C4, 'LineStyle','none', 'Marker','o');

[Voss]

cellstr does nothing in that case, since Group is already a cell array of character vectors.

Group = {'A','B','C','D','E'};
C3 = cellstr(Group);

isequal(C3,Group)

ans = logical
   1

[Zhe Dong]

Yes, I've already learned the lession from Dyuman Joshi, who helped me with this question, but still thanks!

Answer 1

[Sulaymon Eshkabilov]

Is this what you wanted to achieve:

clearvars;clc;close all;
Group = {'A','B','C','D','E'};
C3 = cellstr(Group); % convert cell to string
C4 = categorical(C3);% convert string to categorical 
a = [1; 2; 3]; b = [4; 5; 6]; c = [6; 7; 8]; d = [9; 10; 11]; e = [12;13; 14];
data=[a,b,c,d,e];
MT = {'d', 'o', 's', 'p', '^'};
MC = {'r', 'g', 'b', 'c', 'm'};
MFC = {'r', 'g', 'b', 'c', 'm'};
for ii=1:numel(C4)
plot(data(:,ii), C4(ii), strcat(MT{ii}, MC{ii})); hold all
end

[Zhe Dong]

Thanks! That's exactly what I want!

[Sulaymon Eshkabilov]

Most welcome! Glad to be of some help! Merry Christmas

[Zhe Dong]

A follow-up question if I may, in your example, I can only use color name (like 'r' or 'b' ) to assign colors, but cannot use RGB triplet or hexadecimal color code right? cuz I tried the other two and it tells me that they are invalid colors

[Sulaymon Eshkabilov]

RGB triplet can be also implemented as numerical values,e.g.:

clearvars;clc;close all;
Group = {'A','B','C','D','E'};
C3 = cellstr(Group); % convert cell to string
C4 = categorical(C3);% convert string to categorical 
a = [1; 2; 3]; b = [4; 5; 6]; c = [6; 7; 8]; d = [9; 10; 11]; e = [12;13; 14];
data=[a,b,c,d,e];
MT = {'d', 'o', 's', 'p', '^'};
MC = [ 1 0 1; 1 1 0; 0 1 1; .75 .5 .25; .5 .75 .75];
MFC = {'r', 'g', 'b', 'c', 'm'};
for ii=1:numel(C4)
plot(data(:,ii), C4(ii), MT{ii}, 'MarkerEdgeColor', MC(ii,:), 'MarkerFaceColor', MFC{ii}); hold all
end

[Zhe Dong]

Also it seems only works if I combine colors and shapes together, if I try to seprate them then it doesn't work, error message see below. Any idea why? Thanks!

clearvars;clc;close all;
Group = {'A','B','C','D','E'};
C3 = cellstr(Group); % convert cell to string
C4 = categorical(C3);% convert string to categorical 
a = [1; 2; 3]; b = [4; 5; 6]; c = [6; 7; 8]; d = [9; 10; 11]; e = [12;13; 14];
data=[a,b,c,d,e];
MT = {'d', 'o', 's', 'p', '^'};
MC = {'r', 'g', 'b', 'c', 'm'};
MFC = {'r', 'g', 'b', 'c', 'm'};
for ii=1:numel(C4)
plot(data(:,ii), C4(ii), 'MarkerEdgeColor',MC(ii),'Marker', MT(ii)); hold all
end

Error using plot
Invalid RGB triplet. Specify a three-element vector of values between 0 and 1.

[Sulaymon Eshkabilov]

If you use cell array notation, it will work, see:

clearvars;clc;close all;
Group = {'A','B','C','D','E'};
C3 = cellstr(Group); % convert cell to string
C4 = categorical(C3);% convert string to categorical 
a = [1; 2; 3]; b = [4; 5; 6]; c = [6; 7; 8]; d = [9; 10; 11]; e = [12;13; 14];
data=[a,b,c,d,e];
MT = {'d', 'o', 's', 'p', '^'};
MC = {'r', 'g', 'b', 'c', 'm'};
MFC = {'r', 'g', 'b', 'c', 'm'};
for ii=1:numel(C4)
plot(data(:,ii), C4(ii), 'MarkerEdgeColor',MC{ii},'Marker', MT{ii}); hold all
end

[Zhe Dong]

Thanks, this is super helpful! Merry Christmas!

[Sulaymon Eshkabilov]

Most welcome! Glad to help.

[Sulaymon Eshkabilov]

Thumbs up! :)

Answer 2

[Dyuman Joshi]

If you have the Statistics and ML toolbox, you can utilize gscatter -

Group = {'A','B','C','D','E'};

%You can convert to categorical directly, cellstr is redundant
C4 = categorical(Group)

C4 = 1×5 categorical array
     A      B      C      D      E 

a = [1; 2; 3]; b = [4; 5; 6]; c = [6; 7; 8]; d = [9; 10; 11]; e = [12;13; 14];
data=[a,b,c,d,e];

%Number of groups
s = numel(C4);

%Select colors for each group from a colormap
colors = hsv(s);

%Define symbols for each group
symbols = 'o.xd*';
%The symbols are respectively - circle dot cross diamond star/asterik

gscatter(data.', C4, C4, colors, symbols, 8, 'doleg', 'off')

[Zhe Dong]

Many thanks for the help, this way works as well!

[Zhe Dong]

in this example, can I define colors myself, instead of using a color map like hsv? thanks!

[Dyuman Joshi]

Yes, you can -

Group = {'A','B','C','D','E'};

%You can convert to categorical directly, cellstr is redundant
C4 = categorical(Group)

C4 = 1×5 categorical array
     A      B      C      D      E 

a = [1; 2; 3]; b = [4; 5; 6]; c = [6; 7; 8]; d = [9; 10; 11]; e = [12;13; 14];
data=[a,b,c,d,e];

%Number of groups
s = numel(C4);

%Define colors manually
colors = [1 0 0; 0 1 0; 0 0 1; 1 0 1; 0 1 1];

%Define symbols for each group
symbols = 'o.xd*';
%The symbols are respectively - circle dot cross diamond star/asterik

gscatter(data.', C4, C4, colors, symbols, 8, 'doleg', 'off')

[Zhe Dong]

Many thanks for the help!