Overlay a scatterplot of continuous data with boxplots summarizing groupings of the same data

I have a scatterplot of continous x-y data values, where the x data is time

x=[1:100]; 

and the y data are measured data values at each time point. For example Y data, lets use 100 random values between 150 and 200:

y = (200-150).*rand(100,1) + 150)

Separately, I've also split the y-value data into 3 groups based on which segment of time they were meausured (group1: x-values from 0-33, group2: x-values from 33-66, etc), and calculated summary statistics of the corresponding y-data for each group. I would like to overlay a boxplot of the summary statistics for each group onto the scatterplot of the continuous data.

figure; ax1=scatter(x, y, [ ], [0.5 0.5 0.5], 'filled', 'MarkerFaceAlpha', .05, 'MarkerFaceColor',[0.5 0.5 0.5] );
xticks(0:20:100);

This scatterplot has xticks and xticklabels from [0:20:100].

I then use "hold on" to create a boxplot over the scatterplot, where I specify the placement of the boxes along the x-axis of the scatterplot to correspond to the center x-value of each group.

 x_group_labels=vertcat(ones(1,33)',ones(1,33)'*2,ones(1,34)'*3);
 hold on; boxA=boxplot(y, x_group_labels, 'symbol', '','Positions', [17,49.5,83]);

However, while the boxplots are properly placed over the scatterplot data in the correct figure location (x=[17,49.5,83] of the scatterplot), the xticks and xlabels have changed so that only the boxplot group number (e.g. "1", "2" ,"3") is visible under each boxplot.

I would like to keep the original x-axis display of the scatterplot and not the boxplot but try as I might, I'm not able to figure out how to accomplish this. Any assistance or tricks would be immensely appreciated.

Answer 1

[Adam Smith]

Fortunately, I just figured out something that works, so I guess I can answer my own question. Adding this line after the plotting the boxplot on top of the scatter plot reverts the x-axis labels back to what was shown on the underlying scatterplot:

set(gca,'XTickLabelMode','auto','XTickMode','auto');

I can't say why or how it works, but it does, so I'll take it!

[CAM]

Congratulations on finding your solution. Sometimes Matlab can be mysterious, so we go with what works! : - )

Answer 2

[CAM]

Have you tried plotting the boxplot on the secondary y-axis and hide its x-labels?

[Adam Smith]

Thanks for the suggestion CAM. I've tried a few ways. If I do either:

yyaxis right;
boxA=boxplot(y, x_group_labels, 'symbol', '','Positions', [17,49.5,83]);
xticklabels([]);

or:

yyaxis right;
boxA=boxplot(y, x_group_labels, 'symbol', '','Positions', [17,49.5,83]);

ax2=get(gca);
ax2.XAxis.Visible='off'; 

both options still remove the figure's x-axis ticks/labels, not just the boxplot's ticks/labels.

And in all cases I've tried, it doesn't work to simply re-set the x-axis ticks as:

set(gca,'xtick',[0:20:100]);