Introduction to Gnuplot

• Basic Use
• Numerical Data
• Experimental Data
• Functions
• Life with gnuplot
• Plotting Styles

Introduction to gnuplot

GNUPLOT is a nice free software which displays various mathematical functions and numerical data. There are many Web ites and documents those explain how to make a plot of functions, so here I describe how to make a figure of numerical data such as experimental data or results of numerical calculations.

Basic Use - from start to the end

• Quit, Read, and Save
• Plot
• Change Parameters
• Shell
• Substitution, Function, Calculation

Use for a Numerical Calculation - Plots of Calculated Results

• Data File
• Plot (X,Y) Pairs
• Draw Several Lines
• Graph Title and Axis Names
• Change XY Range
• Put Graduations
• Done !

Use for Experimental Data - Plots of Experimental Data

• Data File
• Plot Data
• Make a Legend
• Draw a Calculated Line
• Change the Line Style
• Insert Axis Names
• Adjust the Range
• Put Graduations
• Generate a Postscript File

Plot Functions and the Least-Squares fitting to experimental data

• User-defined functions
• Value of the function
• Search for the parameters with a Least-Squares Method
• Output in the Postscript format

Life with gnuplot

• Make a Batch Process
• Draw Many Figures

Plotting styles

• Lines, Dots, and Symbols
• Bar-Graph
• Symbols with Error Bars
• Vectors
• Others