How to get multiple groups plotted with histogram?

With hist, the columns of an input matrix would be interpreted as different data sets and the frequency bars grouped per bin:

hist(rand(20,4))

How to get this behaviour with the new histogram function that is supposed to supercede hist?

histogram(rand(20,4))

[Azzi Abdelmalek]

This is not clear

Answer 1

[the cyclist]

As I suggested in this answer, I think the best you can do is to get the bin counts using the histcounts command, and then use the bar command to plot:

Here is an example.

rng 'default'

data1 = randn(20,1);
data2 = randn(30,1);
data3 = randn(40,1);
data4 = randn(50,1);

edges = -4:1:4;

h1 = histcounts(data1,edges);
h2 = histcounts(data2,edges);
h3 = histcounts(data3,edges);
h4 = histcounts(data4,edges);

figure
bar(edges(1:end-1),[h1; h2; h3; h4]')

Just as an FYI, I do think there is good reason to avoid the side-by-side histogram, which is that the bins do not line up where the actual data are, so it can be misleading. I speculate that this is why MathWorks eliminated this option.

Answer 2

[Image Analyst]

It doesn't look like histogram() or histcounts() processes matrices in columns anymore. So you'd have to do the overlapping bars like in the help, rather than the side-by-side bars.