# Mexican hat in TikZ

How would we typeset a “mexican hat” like the following

in TikZ?

Well the top of the hat looks like a statistical normal distribution. So I would plot that function. Furthermore you could use an arc for the upper part of the hat. And at last you could use a curve for the lower part of the hat. I have tried producing the hat with the following code:

\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=3]
\draw[very thick,domain=-1.5:1.5,xscale=0.5,smooth,variable=\x] plot ({\x},{(1.3*2.718281828^(-0.5*\x*\x))});
\draw[very thick] (0,-0 cm) arc (-90:70:1.5 cm and 0.4 cm);
\draw[very thick] (0,-0 cm) arc (270:110:1.5 cm and 0.4 cm);
\begin{scope}[yshift=0.4 cm]
\draw[very thick] (-10 : -1.5 cm and 0.4 cm) .. controls (-1.25,-0.8) and (1.25,-0.8) .. (-170 : -1.5 cm and 0.4 cm);
\end{scope}
\end{tikzpicture}


I agree it's not perfect, but feel free to improve. :D

• But in your code the function used for the upper part of the hat goes upwards, so you really don't get a hat. – Gonzalo Medina Apr 3 '11 at 1:21
• I'v compiled it with my Linux machine, it displayed a hat. I work from the bottom of the ellipse and arc it to the hat. However I dont see why you would draw this with TikZ. You can use an online vectorizer, to make it vectorized and import it in your pdf using includegraphics. – Willem Van Onsem Apr 3 '11 at 2:12
• Thank you, CommuSoft, this is very close to what I needed! – Thanos D. Papaïoannou Apr 3 '11 at 23:44

I used arcs and a sin, cos combination to draw the hat (feel free to improve it):

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}

\begin{document}

\begin{tikzpicture}[ultra thick]
\draw (2,-1.5) cos (3,0) sin (4,1.5) cos (5,0) sin (6,-1.5);
\draw (2.4,-0.5) arc (114:428:4cm and 1cm);
\draw (.55,-2.5) arc (210:330:4cm and 1cm);
\draw (0.02,-1.45) arc (180:245:1.25cm);
\draw (7.3,-2.57) arc (295:360:1.25cm);
\end{tikzpicture}

\end{document}


• By the way, I'd like to draw your attention to a question about TikZ on meta: meta.tex.stackexchange.com/q/1220/86 – Loop Space Apr 3 '11 at 18:57
• Thank you, Gonzalo, only your solution makes the hat slightly too pointy for my purposes. – Thanos D. Papaïoannou Apr 3 '11 at 23:44
• @Thanos D. Papaïoannou: you can change the top of the hat modifying the sin cos combination; you could use, for example, \draw (2,-1.5) cos (2.8,-0.5) sin (4,0.9) cos (5.2,-0.5) sin (6,-1.5); instead of the corresponding line of my code. – Gonzalo Medina Apr 4 '11 at 1:04