Re: histogram with negativ values

[Christian <po...@we...>]

>From: "Ethan Merritt" <merritt@u.washington.edu>
> On Wednesday 09 July 2008 02:58:05 Christian wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> I tried the histogram function with gnuplot. I have positive and negative
>> values. I would expect that negative values will be start from zero but 
>> in
>> the opposite direction as the positive values.
>
> They do, yes.
>    set style plot histogram cluster
>    set auto y
>    plot 'foo' (column(1)), 'foo' (-column(1))
> gives you one bar going up and one bar going down for each entry.

>> I would also expect this for  the stacked histogram.
>
> That would make no sense. It is not possible to mix positive and negative
> values in a  stacked histogram.  The resulting represenation has no
> unique interpretation.  In a nutshell, the plot would be useless.

It would make sense in some cases. For example I have 4 values e.g. a, b, c 
and d which change over the time. The values c and d are negativ and it 
should a + b = c + d. So I would like to plot all in a stacked histogram a 
and b on the positive side and c + d on the negativ. I think plotting 
negativ values stacked on the negative axis makes more sense than 
subtracting the negative value from the stacked bar. This makes the plot 
senseless for me.

Cheers
Christian