The code below is from the Matlab 2011a help about fft function. I think there is a problem here : why do they multiply t(1:50) by Fs, and then say it's time in millisecond ? Certainly, it happens to be true in this very particular case, but change the value of Fs to, say, 2000, and it won't work anymore, obviously because of this factor of 2. Right ? Quite misleading, isn't it ? What do I miss ? Fs = 1000; % Sampling frequency T = 1/Fs; % Sample time L = 1000; % Length of signal t = (0:L-1)*T; % Time vector % Sum of a 50 Hz sinusoid and a 120 Hz sinusoid x = 0.7*sin(2*pi*50*t) + sin(2*pi*120*t); y = x + 2*randn(size(t)); % Sinusoids plus noise plot(Fs*t(1:50),y(1:50)) title('Signal Corrupted with Zero-Mean Random Noise') xlabel('time (milliseconds)') Clearer with this : fs = 2000; % Sampling frequency T = 1 / fs; % Sample time L = 1000; % Length of signal t2 = (0:L-1)*T; % Time vector f = 50; % signal frequency s2 = sin(2*pi*f*t2); figure, plot(fs*t2(1:50),s2(1:50)); % NOT good figure, plot(t2(1:50),s2(1:50)); % good