MATLAB: Trying to add shared xlabel,ylabel in 3x2 subplot

Question

As the title says, what I am pretty to do is fairly straight forwards. I have a grid of m=3,n=2 subplots. They represent graphs of 6 different experiments measuring the same parameters. I would like to have a single x label and a single y label on the border of the six subplots. Unfortunately, I have not been able to dig up a simple way to do this so far. (xlabel simply puts an xlabel under the last active subplot). Anyone know how this can be done?

Oh, and how would I display degrees Celsius in the label with the degrees symbol?(the little circle...)

Answer 1

You could use mtit to create an invisible axes around the subplots. mtit returns the handle to that axes, for which you can then create xlabel and ylabel.

Example:

% create sample data
my_data = arrayfun(@(x)rand(10, 2) + repmat([x, 0], 10, 1), 1:6, 'UniformOutput', 0);

figure;
clf
ah = gobjects(6, 1); % use zeros if using an old version of MATLAB
% plot data
for ii = 1:6
    ah(ii) = subplot(3, 2, ii);
    plot(1:10, my_data{ii}(:, 1));
    hold on
    plot(1:10, my_data{ii}(:, 2));
end
% link axes to have same ranges
max_data = max(cellfun(@(x) max(x(:)), my_data));
min_data = min(cellfun(@(x) min(x(:)), my_data));
linkaxes(ah, 'xy')
ylim([min_data, max_data])

% Create invisible large axes with title (title could be empty)
hh = mtit('Cool experiment');
%set(gcf, 'currentAxes', hh.ah)
% make ylabels
ylh = ylabel(hh.ah, 'Temperature [°C]');
set(ylh, 'Visible', 'On')
xlh = xlabel(hh.ah, 'x label');
set(xlh, 'Visible', 'On')

This will produce a figure like this one: