How to display side-by-side figures in LaTeX

The other day I tried putting two graphs side-by-side by setting R’s mfrow parameter. That made the graphs look odd because not everything was scaled proportionately. Then someone told me I could use a LaTeX command to place my original graphs side-by-side rather than creating a new image.

The trick is to use the subfigure package. Include the directive \usepackage{subfigure} at the top of your file, then use code something like the following.

\begin{figure}
\centering
\mbox{\subfigure{\includegraphics[width=3in]{fig1.pdf}}\quad
\subfigure{\includegraphics[width=3in]{fig2.pdf} }}
\caption{Text pertaining to both graphs ...} \label{fig12}
\end{figure}

If you put text in square brackets immediately after the \subfigure command, that text will be a caption for the corresponding sub-figure. For example, the LaTeX code above might be changed to include the following.

...\subfigure[Description of left graph]{\includegraphics...