Re: Is it possible to plot a point a time on the same graph in Mathematica?
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg25863] Re: Is it possible to plot a point a time on the same graph in Mathematica?
- From: "A. E. Siegman" <siegman at stanford.edu>
- Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2000 01:25:46 -0500 (EST)
- Organization: Stanford University
- References: <ctQI5.767$qE1.38868@ralph.vnet.net> <8t65c7$eif@smc.vnet.net>
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
In article <8t65c7$eif at smc.vnet.net>, H Shou <H.Shou at cs.cf.ac.uk> wrote: > Dear Sir: > > I have a lot of points endlessly generated by the > Mathematica 4.0 which needed to be ploted. > > At first I send the points to an List, then use ListPlot to > plot them. > > But I found it need too much time to get the result picture. > > Is it possible to plot a point a time on the same graph in > Mathematica so that I can watch the progress instead of > keeping on waiting. > > Henry Shaw I will be *very* interested to see what answers you get on this, because I think the answer is essentially NO -- and this is perhaps *THE* single most serious weakness of Mathematica as a teaching and display tool. That is, you can't "write to the screen" to put a new plot into an existing on-screen plot in Mathematica because Mathematica graphics are fundamentally built around PostScript, and PostScript involves fully creating a plot, and only then displaying it. There is probably a way to do something like what you want by opening a new window to hold your plot, and after every N plots, erase the old plot in that window and write a new one that is N points larger, i.e. replots the same list with N new points added. You of course pick N somewhere between 1 (which may slow the progress of your computation greatly) and some value determined by your level of impatience in watching the calculation progress.