Putting an arrow next to table

Question

I have a table. Each row in that table represents data at a certain point of time. Lower rows represent data for later times.

To illustrate this, I'd like to draw an arrow at the side (which doesn't really matter) of the table, pointing downwards, labelled with something like "time".

How would I do this?

score 16 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 10 '20 at 12:32

16

You can use \Downarrow to put a double arrow, or \downarrow for a single arrow. Applying a \left ... \right will allow it to be scaled to the height of the table.

The text can be added via \rotatebox[origin=c]{90}{time} from the graphicx package.

enter image description here

Notes:

Assuming you only want the arrow on the left, then you will need to ensure that you replace the \right\downarrow with \right. at the end of the table. Similarly, replace the \left\Downarrow with \left. if you only want the arrow on the right..

Code:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\begin{document}
$\rotatebox[origin=c]{90}{time}%
\left\Downarrow% Use \left. if don't want arrow on this side.
\begin{tabular}{r r}
 1:00 & 2 \
 3:00 & 4 \
 5:00 & 6 \
 7:00 & 8 \
 8:00 & 10 \
\end{tabular}
\right\downarrow%  Use \right. if don't want arrow on this side.
\rotatebox[origin=c]{90}{time}$
\end{document}

edited Jun 10 '20 at 12:32

Community

1

answered Jun 20 '12 at 22:27

Peter Grill

223,288

Very elegant! Upvoted this. :) – mSSM Jun 20 '12 at 22:51
Is it possible to do the same at the top/bottom of the table with left/right arrows? – DurandA Oct 22 '20 at 15:30
@DurandAL I recommend you post a new question. I personally would use the \tikzmarksolution as shown in the other answer as that would be a lot more flexible. – Peter Grill Oct 22 '20 at 16:51

score 8 · Answer 2 · edited Jun 03 '17 at 13:02

The following code contains two options; the first one doesn't use any special symbol, simply adds /time(incr.) to the column header to indicate an increasing time sequence order. The second one is a TikZ based solution:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{booktabs}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{calc}

\newcommand\tikzmark[1]{%
  \tikz[overlay,remember picture] \coordinate (#1);}

\begin{document}

\noindent\begin{tabular}{lc}
\toprule
head1 & data/time(incr.) \\
\midrule
text & 3 \\
text & 2 \\
text & 1 \\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}

\vspace{1cm}

\noindent\begin{tabular}{lc}
\toprule
head1 & data \\
\midrule
text & 3\tikzmark{start}\\
text & 2 \\
text & 1\tikzmark{end} \\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}

\begin{tikzpicture}[overlay,remember picture]
    \draw[->] let \p1=(start), \p2=(end) in ($(\x1,\y1)+(0.8,0.2)$) -- node[label=right:time] {} ($(\x1,\y2)+(0.8,0)$);
  \end{tikzpicture}

\end{document}

enter image description here

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 09 '23 at 09:15

Here is a solution with {NiceTabular} of nicematrix.

\documentclass[letterpaper]{book}
\usepackage{nicematrix,tikz,booktabs}
\begin{document}
\NiceMatrixOptions{nullify-dots,xdots/horizontal-labels}
\begin{NiceTabular}{cc}[first-row,last-col]
\toprule
head1 & date \
\midrule
text & 3 & \Vdots[line-style={solid,->}]^{\text{time}}\
text & 2 \
text & 1 \
\bottomrule
\end{NiceTabular}
\end{document}

You can as many rows as you want without changing the code for the arrow.

Putting an arrow next to table

3 Answers3

Notes:

Code:

Linked