Animation of graphing a function

Question

Do anybody have a program which shows a computer graphing a function pointwise in stages? For example:

At stage 1, it graphs all the integer x values

Stage 2, all the multiples of 1/2

Stage 3, all the multiples of 1/4

and so on until we have a full picture of a continuous function.

A single continuous animation of random points being plotted until it fills in a continuous graph would be just as good.

Comment if you are interested in this. I might try my hand at making one if nobody has already.

Answer 1

This is pretty straightforward in Mathematica:

f[x_] := x^2;
xrangeleft = -2;
xrangeright = 2;
yrange = {0, 4};
xrange = {xrangeleft,xrangeright};
frames = Table[ListPlot[Table[{x, f[x]}, {x, xrangeleft, xrangeright, 1/2^i}], 
         PlotRange -> {xrange, yrange}], {i, 0, 10, 1}]
Export["FunctionPlot.gif", frames]

(You might need to use Directory[] to find out where it exported your file.)

This creates the following:

Answer 2

Here is the code in Matlab for the sine function:

for k = 0:6
n=2^k          % stage number, k=0: integer values, k=1: stage 2, ...
x=0:1/n:3*pi;
y = sin(x);    % sine function
pause(1);      % pause duration 
plot(x,y,'b.')
axis ([0 3*pi -1.5 1.5])
grid on
end

Answer 3

If I may suggest a tiny variation on Aeryk's nice code, to slow it down, and join the dots:

---

               

---

f[x_] := x^3;
xrangeleft = -2;
xrangeright = 2;
yrange = {-8, 8};
xrange = {xrangeleft, xrangeright};
frames = Table[
   ListPlot[Table[{x, f[x]}, {x, xrangeleft, xrangeright, 1/2^i}]
    , Joined -> True
    , Mesh -> Full
    , PlotRange -> {xrange, yrange}]
   , {i, 0, 3, 1}];
Export["FunctionPlot.gif", frames, "DisplayDurations" -> 3.0]