Gnuplot in Action

Chapter 3. Working with data

This chapter covers

• Managing large data sets
• Smoothing and summarizing data
• Math with gnuplot
• Data transformations

Working with data is what gnuplot is all about. In this chapter, we look at three blocks of functionality, all of which help us to perform increasingly complicated operations on data. First we look at some special gnuplot syntax to pick out only parts from a larger file—often useful when dealing with data sets that are larger or more complicated than the straightforward ones we’ve considered so far. Then we discuss commands to smooth or otherwise clean up messy data sets. And finally, after taking a quick look at its math capabilities, we introduce gnuplot’s data transformation features, which allow ...