Labeled Number Line

Question

I am transferring a professor's .doc files to LaTeX so that we can do more sophisticated formatting and I ran across a problem.

I would like to recreate this number line in LaTeX.

Help with which package to use and which commands to study would be a great help.

Answer 1

You don't really need any extra packages for that kind of diagram, LaTeX can do that unaided:

\documentclass{article}

\begin{document}
\newcounter{nn}
\setlength\unitlength{2pt}

\begin{picture}(100,100)

\put(10,60){$L_1=114.06$}
\put(70,60){$L_2=119.94$}
\put(50,30){$\mu$}
\put(0,50){\line(1,0){100}}
\multiput(10,50)(10,0){9}{\line(0,1){5}}
\setcounter{nn}{113}%
\multiput(10,40)(10,0){9}{\makebox(0,0){\thenn\stepcounter{nn}}}

\thicklines
\put(20,50){\circle{3}}
\put(80,50){\circle{3}}

\linethickness{2pt}
\put(20,50){\line(1,0){60}}
\end{picture}

\end{document}

Answer 2

You can use TikZ; the manual is great and contains numerous examples; in the following example, the basic constructs are \node and \draw:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}

\begin{document}

\begin{tikzpicture}
% a straight line segment
\draw (0.5,0) -- (10.5,0);
% the ticks and their labels
\foreach \x  in {1,...,10}
  \draw[xshift=\x cm] (0pt,2pt) -- (0pt,-1pt) node[below,fill=white] {\the\numexpr\x +112\relax};
% the thicker segment
\draw[ultra thick] (2.06,0) -- (8.94,0);
% the labels
\node[fill=white,draw=black,circle,inner sep=2pt,label=above:{$L_1=114.06$}] at (2.12,0) {};
\node[fill=white,draw=black,circle,inner sep=2pt,label=above:{$L_1=119.94$}] at (8.9,0) {};
\node at (5.5,-0.8) {$\mu$};
\end{tikzpicture}

\end{document}

And here's a variation using pgfplots (which internally uses TikZ and is very useful for plots):

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{pgfplots}

\begin{document}

\begin{tikzpicture}
\begin{axis}[
  axis y line=none,
  axis lines=left,
  axis line style={-},
  xmin=112.5,
  xmax=121.5,
  ymin=0,
  ymax=1,
  xlabel=$\mu$,
  scatter/classes={o={mark=*}},
  restrict y to domain=0:1,
  xtick={113,114,...,121}
]
\addplot table [y expr=0,meta index=1, header=false] {
114.06 o
119.94 o
};
\node[coordinate,label=above:{$L_1=114.06$}] at (axis cs:114.06,0.05) {};
\node[coordinate,label=above:{$L_2=119.94$}] at (axis cs:119.94,0.05) {};
\end{axis}
\end{tikzpicture}

\end{document}