up vote 16 down vote favorite
4

I googled and found how to do it in LaTeX software on your computer, but what about this website, possible to draw graphs as easy as writing out a matrix in LaTeX?

Failing that is there some website that will generate an image for you given the graph spec.

Thanks.

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No, I do not think so. Instead, you need to draw your graphs in LaTeX, save the picture (using a screenshot, say) and then upload that to here. –  user1729 Sep 23 at 20:25
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Related: What software is used to draw undirected graphs? and Graph theory software? –  Martin Sleziak Sep 23 at 20:32
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(And for the record, use TikZ if you want to draw anything in $\LaTeX$. And I mean anything. Well, anything mathematical.) –  user1729 Sep 23 at 20:34
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If I thought there was even a remote chance that it would be satisfied, my number one feature-request would be tikz support for MSE. –  Alexander Gruber♦ Sep 23 at 21:35
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@Alexander. I'd second that, since I use tikz for all the pictures I've posted (and lots of handouts for my classes), but you'd probably agree that tikz has a frightfully steep learning curve for novices. –  Rick Decker Sep 26 at 14:30

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3 Answers

up vote 11 down vote

If you know Mathematica syntax you can use Wolfram Alpha for simple graphs. Then post the image here:

graphs

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up vote 4 down vote

Well, there are many ways to create a picture, and upload it here. Some of the more obvious alternatives are:

(1) MS Paint, GIMP, or other paint programs

(2) Illustrator, Corel, Powerpoint, Inkscape, or other vector drawing packages

(3) TikZ or MetaPost or Asymptote, if you think that writing code is a good way to create pictures.

(4) Mathematica, Maple, Matlab, or any other package with graphing capabilities

(5) Draw on paper, and scan

(6) Draw on a whiteboard (or even a blackboard), and shoot with a camera or mobile phone.

Options 5 and 6 give you a bitmap image directly. The other options will require you to generate one indirectly. A screen grab is usually the easiest way.

For graphs, I would recommend #2 or #5, personally.

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Please, don't use a point-and shoot camera or phone camera unless you're photographing something three-dimensional. –  dfeuer Oct 24 at 2:43
up vote 1 down vote

Graphviz can draw graphs, and google charts API can do graphviz. See erdos for a tool that lets you use the API interactively.

Alternatively, you can use tikz, and a site like writelatex.com to render it.

When using either of these, I use imgur.com's browser plugin to rehost the image, and I use gist to save the source; I make sure to link the sources from my diagrams in my questions and answers.

Typically, I use <sup><\sup> to "caption" the images from underneath.

Another trick: when displaying multiple images, you can resize them to fit on the same row side-by-side; IIRC the width of the display is ~660 pixels (on at least on cs.SE; I hope it doesn't change!) - image hosting sites like imgur.com directly support simple image editing, like scaling and cropping - then I caption them underneath like "left: description, right: description".

Example:

Image of graph Image of shortest path enter image description here

Left: Full graph. Center: shortest path. Right: shortest non-intersecting path.

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Oh, please don't rely on a certain number of pixels in the display! –  dfeuer Oct 24 at 2:40
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You can put images side-by-side in $\LaTeX$ using \minipage –  user1729 Oct 26 at 13:41
 
@dfeuer you can combine the images if need be lol. Or like user1729 suggested, you can combine them in LaTeX. –  Realz Slaw Oct 28 at 18:05

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