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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-11T21:05:56+00:00

Ok, here’s some code in MATLAB: data = [1 1.5 2 3 4 4.5

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Ok, here’s some code in MATLAB:

data = [1 1.5 2 3 4 4.5 5 6 7 7 7 0 0 0];

histc(data, [1:1:5])
histc(data, [1:1:5, inf])
histc(data, [-inf, 1:1:5])

which outputs the following:

ans = 2     1     1     2     1
ans = 2     1     1     2     5     0
ans = 3     2     1     1     2     1

My question is, why does MATLAB return a useless 0 when you use inf in the bin size (to mean >= 5 in this case)?

Won’t it always be zero? The help says the output will always be the same length as the bin size, but isn’t that a bad spec in this case?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    That’s actually the correct behavior of HISTC. When you use the syntax:

    n = histc(x,edges);

    then, from the documentation:

    n(k) counts the value x(i) if edges(k)
    <= x(i) < edges(k+1). The last bin
    counts any values of x that match
    edges(end).

    Therefore, the last edge value you give returns the count of how many things exactly match it. When inf is the last edge value, that counts 0 (i.e. there are no infs in the data). When 5 is the last edge value, it exactly matches 1 value in the data.

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