How to create a smoothed histogram and compute it's derivative magnitude in matlab

How can I created a smoothed histogram in matlab and I will also like to know how I can compute it's derivative magnitude.

(Assume I want to do that for a vector e.g. y = randn(1,500))

Answer 1

[Mike Garrity]

If you have the statistics toolbox, you might want to consider ksdensity.

x = [randn(300,1); 5+randn(300,1)];
histogram(x,'Normalization','probability')
[f,xi] = ksdensity(x);
hold on
plot(xi,f)

Answer 2

[Richa Gupta]

If you have the Curve Fitting Toolbox, you can use the 'smooth' function for creating a smoothed histogram. For computing the derivative magnitude, you can use the 'diff' function. A sample code is below:

   y = randn(1,500);
   x = smooth(y);
   z = diff(y);