Plotting functions

In this mode MathMate plots function graphs. Plotter mode may be turned on by clicking the Modes icon or choosing Plotter in the Mode toolbar. When the plotter mode is on the plotter icon is displayed to the left of the expression.

In the plotter mode you may use MathMate to plot function graphs in the following way

  1. Switch to plotter mode
  2. Input an expression, e.g. sin (x)
  3. In this example, unless x is assigned some value, it is considered the plot variable. If there are several identifiers in the expression, choose which one is to be variable and initialize the rest of the parameters using the parameter panel
  4. Enter lower and upper limits for x in the corresponding fields, e.g. -PI and PI.
  5. Click Start or press Enter
If calculation succeeds, the graph window appears and displays the graph. Otherwise an error message is displayed. If some of the values of the expression for the chosen range of values of x are outside the function's domain or yield infinite values, a warning is displayed.

The graph window contains the graph of the function and information about both x and f(x) ranges. The bottom and left sides of the graph window contain rulers showing measurement. The top and right sides of the graph window display the abcissa and ordinate scaling factors (in the form ( x 1eN where N is the exponent), so that all the numbers marked on the rulers should be multiplied by the corresponding scaling factors. The scaling factor is always chosen so that the rulers contain not more than 10 number marks. In particular, for the above example, the abcissa ruler will contain marks "-3", "-2", "-1", "0", "1", "2", "3", since the range is (-3.14..., 3.14...) but if you decide to plot from -2*PI to 2*PI, the ruler will only contain mark "0" since the range becomes (-0.628..., 0.628...) with a scaling factor 1e1 (= 10).

The graph window can be resized according to the user preferences. Note that the number of points at which the function value is calculated for plotting is equal to the width of the graph window in pixels, so that plotting in a larger window takes more time.