How to keep markers as dots in a joined ListPlot?

Question

Consider the following typical interactive sequence. First I produce a ListPlot:

OK, not bad, but I want those dots to be bigger, and also joined. First, I make the dots bigger, like this:

Good. Next, to join the dots, I do this:

Aaaarrrrrgh! The dots disappeared! Why??? Don't they know anything about usability at WRI?

I have tried to achieve the desired effect in a bazillion ways, and they all fail for one reason or another: either the dots no longer look like dots (but rather like diamonds, squares, triangles), or they are no longer the same color as the lines joining them, or something else...

So my question is: how can I achieve the simple effect of several plots of (distinctly visible) dots joined by lines, and each plot of a different, but uniform, color?

I also have a meta-question: The frustration illustrated by the interaction above is entirely typical of my experience with Mathematica, since day 1. I used to think that the reason why I had such difficulty getting the simplest things done with Mathematica was that I just didn't know it well enough... But this problem has persisted over the years, with hardly any improvement, even though I've devoted considerable effort to learning more and more about Mathematica. I have been using Mathematica now for about 20 years (!), and I still struggle for hours at a time with trivialities like this one. This makes me wonder whether these difficulties are really more a reflection with a fundamental flaw in some aspect of Mathematica's design (one that somehow makes conceptually simple things turn out to be disproportionately difficult). Sure, when one is starting out with some new software simple things may take a long time to accomplish, but Mathematica is the only software that I've been using for more than, say 4-5 years, and that I still have to struggle with for hours to get simple things to work (and very often I just have to give up with)...

Answer 1

The PlotMarkers option is designed to handle this problem. Here are two very simple ways to do it using that option.

data = Table[Table[Sin[k x], {x, 0, 2 Pi, 0.1}], {k, {1, 2, 3}}];

ListPlot[data,
  Joined -> True,
  PlotMarkers -> {Automatic, 7}]

The above solution has a drawback: there can be a slight misalignment of the markers, because they're rendered as text. See this question for a detailed discussion.

ListPlot[data,
  Joined -> True,
  PlotMarkers -> Graphics@{Disk[{0, 0}, [email protected]]}]

Note: it might seem that wrapping Disk with List is unnecessary, but that is not the case. Without the wrapper, the points will alll be black. See this question for more detail.

Answer 2

This is a duplicate but I can't find it, meanwhile:

ListPlot[Table[Table[Sin[k x], {x, 0, 2 Pi, 0.1}], {k, {1, 2, 3}}], 
         PlotStyle -> [email protected], Joined -> True
        ] /.  Line[x_, y___] :> {Point[x], Line[x, y]}

Answer 3

Here is a low-level solution for this problem which guarantees exact positioning of graphics primitives:

data = Table[Table[{x, Sin[k x]}, {x, 0, 2 Pi, 0.1}], {k, 3}];

Graphics[MapIndexed[{ColorData[1]@@ #2, Line@#1, PointSize[Medium], Point@#1} &, data], 
 Axes -> True, AspectRatio -> 1/GoldenRatio]

Answer 4

Quick-and-dirty:

data = Table[Table[{x, Sin[k x]}, {x, 0, 2 Pi, 0.1}], {k, 3}];
Show[
 ListPlot[data, Joined -> True (* add other options here *)],
 ListPlot[data, PlotStyle -> PointSize[Medium]]]

Setting the colors of the dots independently is easy:

Show[
 ListPlot[data, Joined -> True (* add other options here *)],
 ListPlot[data, PlotStyle -> Directive[{PointSize[Medium], Gray}]]]

Answer 5

data = Table[Sin[k x], {k, 3}, {x, 0, 2 Pi, 0.1}];
ListLinePlot[data,  Mesh -> All]

MapThread[
  ListLinePlot[#, Mesh -> All, PlotStyle -> {[email protected], #2}] &,
   {data, ColorData[1, "ColorList"]~Take~3}] // Show