fastscatter.m

A fast scatter plot

h=fastscatter(X,Y,C [,markertype,property-value pairs])

Inputs:
X,Y: coordinates
C: color


Examples:
N=100000;
fastscatter(randn(N,1),randn(N,1),randn(N,1))

N=100;
fastscatter(randn(N,1),randn(N,1),randn(N,1),'+','markersize',7)
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An illustrative example of the speed-up when using fastscatter over scatter:
N=200000;
X=randn(N,1);Y=randn(N,1);C=X.^2+Y.^2+randn(N,1);S=ones(N,1);
tic; for ii=1:10, clf; fastscatter(X,Y,C); drawnow; end; fastscatter_time=toc
tic; for ii=1:10, clf; scatter(X,Y,S,C); drawnow; end; regularscatter_time=toc
speed_increase=regularscatter_time/fastscatter_time

fastscatter_time = 3.4 seconds
regularscatter_time = 63.3 seconds
speed_increase = 18x

And for N=400000, the performance boost was ~38x.