Summary of Time Tables

Summary function works in the same manner on time tables, as it works on ordinary tables. We pass the timetable object as an input and receive the summary.

In this example, we shall first create a timetable and then shall call the summary function on it.

Output:

>> weather

weather =

  3x1 timetable

              dates              temp
    ___________    ____

    20-Apr-2023             20 
    21-Apr-2023              23 
    22-Apr-2023              17 

Here, we have collected a data of temperatures on three dates. Then we created a timetable named weather. Now, we shall call the summary command in the command window to receive the summary of this timetable.

Output:

>> summary(weather)

RowTimes:

    dates: 3x1 datetime
        Values:
            Min           20-Apr-2023 
            Median        21-Apr-2023 
            Max           22-Apr-2023 
            TimeStep      24:00:00    

Variables:

    temp: 3x1 double

        Values:

            Min          17   
            Median       20   
            Max          23   

Here we get similar output as of an ordinary table. Since the first column contains datetime data, we get the minimum, maximum and the median value along with a timestamp. For the second column, we receive summary containing the maximum, minimum and median value of the temperatures.

MATLAB provides various ways to store and organize data such as tables, categorical arrays, arrays, timetables, vectors, etc. MATLAB deals with big data used for machine learning and other mathematical functions which require different organization of data. For small data it is efficient to take a look at the entire data and summarize it but, the same cannot be done when you are working with big data or binary data(.mat files).

For such situations, MATLAB provides the summary function which returns a brief summary of the data structure passed to it. It must be noted here that the summary function works only on three type of MATLAB objects:

1. Table
2. Timetable
3. Categorical Array/Vector

In this article, we shall see how to use the summary function on the above-mentioned MATLAB objects.