plot - How to scale the axis in Gnuplot

Question

I have a data set that has two tab delimited columns that I plot in a simple XY axis. The independent variable (x axis) is duration in minutes. What I want is to plot this in hours instead of minutes. How would I apply this scaling in gnuplot while plotting?

Answer 1

Have a look at this question; perhaps it will help.

In your case I expect you want something like

set xdata time
set timefmt "%M"
set format x "%H:%M"

These commands tell gnuplot you are providing timedata in the form of minutes, but you want them displayed with hours and minutes.

EDIT (see comments): (ignoring the time formatting) Scaling the axis of a data file data.dat can be achieved as follows:

plot "data.dat" using ($1/60):2 with lines

The $1 is the column that you want to scale, which you manipulate with maths operations. You usually need to wrap the whole expression in parenthesis before the moving onto other columns.