Scale measurement data

Question

I have some measured data, experiment.dat which goes like this:

1 2
2 3

Now I want to plot them via some command line

plot "experiment.dat" using 1:2 title "experiment" with lines lw 3

Is there some way how to scale the different lines with some scaling factor like -1?

Answer 1

Yes, you can do any kind of calculations inside the using statement. To scale the y-value (the second column) with -1, use

plot "experiment.dat" using 1:(-1*$2)

Answer 2

You don't need to multiply the column by minus one, you can simply use:

p "experiment.dat" u 1:(-$2)

at least with Version 5.4 works fine.

You can also only use the initial letter of every command.