increasing the fontsize of the y-label tickmarks on a dendrogram/tree

I created a dendrogram where the x-axis is the distance/dissimilarity between clusters and the y-axis are the objects. I want to increase the font size, but only the x-axis objects are increased, the y-axis labels remain the same. How do I do this?

[Adam Danz]

Please show us what you tried already.

[cgo]

I have tried the usual set(gca,'Fontsize',18). This does not work.

I have also tried calling the objects ax.YTickLabels, etcetc... Still no success.

[Adam Danz]

Please provide a minimal working example that reproduces the problem.

I don't see any problem with the example below.

X = rand(10,3);
tree = linkage(X,'average')
figure()
dendrogram(tree)
set(gca,'FontSize',18)

[cgo]

sorry. i forgot to say that i used custom labels here. So only the distance/dissimilarity measures are default. The labels of the individual points are custom. So upon resizing, only the distance axis is resized. The parts where I used my custom label are unaffected by the fontsize change.

[Adam Danz]

I can provide a quite answer as soon as I have a working example that produces your plot (or you could attach the figure file).

[cgo]

%%I also made modifications to the colours as a visualization requirement.


X = rand(10,5);
Y = pdist(X); 
Z = linkage(Y);

labels = {'man1','man2', 'man3','man4','man5','woman1','woman2','woman3','woman4', 'woman5'};

H = dendrogram(Z,0, 'Labels', labels, 'Orientation','left'); 

set(H,'LineWidth',2)

ax = gca; % get the axes handle
X = get(ax.Children,'XData'); % Get x values of all lines
Y = get(ax.Children,'YData'); % Get y values of all lines


ax = gca; % get the axes handle
lab = ax.YAxis.TickLabels; % get all the labels
loc = ax.YAxis.TickValues; % get all labels location
[ulab,~,lab_ind] = unique(lab); % find all unique labels
clr = lines(numel(ulab)); % make a color map
for k = 1:numel(ulab) % for every type of lable
    ind = strcmp(ulab{k},lab); % find all instances in lab
    x = repelem(ax.XAxis.Limits(1)-0.01,sum(ind)); % make an x position vector
     % place this lable at the same locations with a distinct color:
    text(x,loc(ind),lab(ind),'Color',clr(k,:));
end
ax.YAxis.TickLabels = []; % remove the original labels
% replace the original labels with white space, to keep the axes position:
ax.YAxis.TickLabels = repelem('  ',max(cellfun(@numel,lab)));

for k = 1:numel(Y)
    if Y{k}(1)==fix(Y{k}(1))
        line(ax,X{k}(1:2),Y{k}(1:2),'Color',clr(lab_ind(Y{k}(1)),:),...
            'LineWidth',2);
    end
    if Y{k}(3)==fix(Y{k}(3))
        line(ax,X{k}(3:4),Y{k}(3:4),'Color',clr(lab_ind(Y{k}(3)),:),...
            'LineWidth',2);
    end
end

set(gca,'fontsize',18)
xlabel('distance/dissimilarity between clusters');

Answer 1

[Adam Danz]

Your y-labels aren't really tick labels. They are text objects. You need to store their handles and set their fontsize directly.

textLabels = gobjects(size(ulab));              %  PREALLOCATE HANDLES VECTOR
for k = 1:numel(ulab) 
     % [ YOUR OTHER CODE GOES HERE] .... 
     
    textLabels(k) = text(x,loc(ind),lab(ind),'Color',clr(k,:));  % STORE EACH HANDLE
end

Then change fontsize

set(textLabels,'FontSize', 18)

However, the whole approach seems inefficient.

Instead of defining the labels at the top of your code and then change the labels within the loop, just set the labels correctly before making the plot. That way your lables are actual y-tick labels and will respond to set(gca,'fontsize',18).

[cgo]

thanks for your suggestion!

[Adam Danz]

Glad I could help!

[Tahariet Sharon]

What is x in your code?

[Adam Danz]

I'm using the same variables the OP shared in a previous comment.

See the first input to the text(x,y,str) function.