This example creates a histogram object, and then shows how to adjust the properties of the histogram to affect the output display.

Create a histogram for all of the prime numbers less than 10,000,000. Specify an output argument to return the histogram object, h.

x = primes(1e7);
h = histogram(x)

h = 

  Histogram with properties:

             Data: [1×664579 double]
           Values: [1×100 double]
          NumBins: 100
         BinEdges: [1×101 double]
         BinWidth: 100000
        BinLimits: [0 10000000]
    Normalization: 'count'
        FaceColor: 'auto'
        EdgeColor: [0 0 0]

  Use GET to show all properties

Change the normalization of the histogram by setting the Normalization property to 'probability'.

h.Normalization = 'probability';

Use horizontal bars for the histogram.

h.Orientation = 'horizontal';

Zoom in to a specific range of bins. When you set BinLimits, the BinLimitsMode automatically changes to 'manual'.

h.BinLimits = [1e6,2e6];

Zoom back out to the original bin scaling by switching BinLimitsMode back to 'auto'.

h.BinLimitsMode = 'auto';

Change the number of bins in the histogram.

h.NumBins = 200;

Create a vertical stair histogram.

h.Orientation = 'vertical';
h.DisplayStyle = 'stairs';

Use the savefig function to save a histogram figure.

y = histogram(randn(10));
savefig('histogram.fig');
clear all
close all

Use openfig to load the histogram figure back into MATLAB. openfig also returns a handle to the figure, h.

h = openfig('histogram.fig');

Use the findobj function to locate the correct object handle from the figure handle. This allows you to continue manipulating the original histogram object used to generate the figure.

y = findobj(h, 'type', 'histogram')

y = 

  Histogram with properties:

             Data: [10×10 double]
           Values: [2 17 28 32 16 3 2]
          NumBins: 7
         BinEdges: [-3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4]
         BinWidth: 1
        BinLimits: [-3 4]
    Normalization: 'count'
        FaceColor: 'auto'
        EdgeColor: [0 0 0]

  Use GET to show all properties