Data Selection
Selecting Data to Fit in Curve Fitting App
To select data to fit, use the drop-down lists in the Curve Fitting app to select variables in your MATLAB® workspace.
To fit curves:
Select X data and Y data.
Select only Y data to plot
Yagainst index (x=1:length( y )).
To fit surfaces, select X data, Y data and Z data.
You can use the Curve Fitting app drop-down lists to select any numeric variables (with more than one element) in your MATLAB workspace.
Similarly, you can select any numeric data in your workspace to use as Weights.
For curves, X, Y, and Weights must be matrices with the same number of elements.
For surfaces, X, Y, and Z must be either:
Matrices with the same number of elements
Data in the form of a table
For surfaces, weights must have the same number of elements as Z.
For more information see Selecting Compatible Size Surface Data.
When you select variables, the Curve Fitting app immediately creates a curve or surface fit with the default settings. If you want to avoid time-consuming refitting for large data sets, you can turn off Auto fit by clearing the check box.
Note
The Curve Fitting app uses a snapshot of the data you select. Subsequent workspace changes to the data have no effect on your fits. To update your fit data from the workspace, first change the variable selection, and then reselect the variable with the drop-down controls.
Selecting Compatible Size Surface Data
For surface data, in Curve Fitting app you can select either Matrices of the Same Size or Table Data.
Matrices of the Same Size
Curve Fitting app expects inputs to be the same size. If the sizes are different but the number of elements are the same, then the tool reshapes the inputs to create a fit and displays a warning in the Results pane. The warning indicates a possible problem with your selected data.
Table Data
Table data means that X and Y represent
the row and column headers of a table (sometimes called breakpoints)
and the values in the table are the values of the Z output.
Sizes are compatible if:
X is a vector of length
n.Y is a vector of length
m.Z is a 2D matrix of size
[m,n].
The following table shows an example of data in the
form of a table with n = 4 and m = 3.
x(1) | x(2) | x(3) | x(4) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
y(1) | z(1,1) | z(1,2) | z(1,3) | z(1,4) |
y(2) | z(2,1) | z(2,2) | z(2,3) | z(2,4) |
y(3) | z(3,1) | z(3,2) | z(3,3) | z(3,4) |
Like the surf function,
the Curve Fitting app expects inputs where length(X) = n, length(Y)
= m and size(Z) = [m,n]. If the size
of Z is [n,m], the tool creates
a fit but first transposes Z and warns about transforming
your data. You see a warning in the Results pane
like the following example:
Using X Input for rows and Y Input for columns to match Z Output matrix.
For suitable example table data, run the following code:
x = linspace( 0, 1, 7 );
y = linspace( 0, 1, 9 ).';
z = bsxfun( @franke, x, y );
For surface fitting at the command line with the fit function, use the prepareSurfaceData function if your
data is in table form.
Weights
If you specify surface Weights, assign an input the same size as Z. If the sizes are different but the number of elements is the same, Curve Fitting app reshapes the weights and displays a warning.
Troubleshooting Data Problems
If there are problems with the data you select, you see messages in the
Results pane. For example, the Curve Fitting app ignores
Infs, NaNs, and imaginary components of complex
numbers in the data, and you see messages in the Results pane in these
cases.
If you see warnings about reshaping your data or incompatible sizes, read Selecting Compatible Size Surface Data for information.
If you see the following warning: Duplicate x-y data
points detected: using average of the z values, this means
that there are two or more data points where the input values (x,
y) are the same or very close together. The default interpolant fit
type needs to calculate a unique value at that point. You do not need
do anything to fix the problem, this warning is just for your information.
The Curve Fitting app automatically takes the average z value of any
group of points with the same x-y values.
Other problems with your selected data can produce the following error:
Error computing Delaunay triangulation. Please try again with different data.
Note
Data selection is disabled if you are in debug mode. Exit debug mode to change data selections.