Lately, I needed to create a couple of graphs to exemplify something in a manuscript that I have been working on. Even though, I was relatively familiar with TikZ, given the immense amount of templates online it was quite difficult to stick to only one, because most of them had so many unnecessary features for my purpose. Finally, using the two references listed at the bottom I came up with something quite useful and intuitive to solve my problem.

The main reason why I am using this rater rudimentary way to create the graph, is because I didn’t want to rely on TikZ criteria to set my axis. In particular, because I needed to create several similar figures that were different enough to be not possible to include them all in just one figure.

The LaTeX code is listed below.

The graph should be render shortly:

if you are visiting from your cellphone you probably won’t be able to see the embedder pdf. However, you can press here to see the magic!

\documentclass[tikz]{standalone}
\usepackage{tikz}


\begin{document}    
\begin{tikzpicture}
 \usetikzlibrary{positioning}
 
%----------center of the graph----------% 
\node (center) {};
%----------Functions to be plotted----------%
\draw[scale=1, domain=-4:2.6, smooth ,variable=\x, blue,thick] plot  ({\x}, {ln(1+exp(\x))});
\draw[scale=1, domain=0.3:3.7,  dotted ,variable=\x, red,thick] plot  ({\x}, {(\x-2)*(\x-2)+ 1}   );
\draw[scale=1, domain=-1.7:1.7, densely dotted ,variable=\x, black,thick] plot  ({\x}, {\x*\x});
%----------Name----------%
\node (quadratic1) [scale=0.6,above right=3.3cm and 1.8cm of center,red ] {$y=(x-2)^{2} + 1$};
\node (quadratic2) [scale=0.6,above left=2.5cm and 1.7cm of center,black ] {$y=x^{2}$};
\node (logsum) [scale=0.6,above left=0.1cm and 2cm of center,blue ] {$y=\ln(1 + \exp(x))$};
%----------Axis----------%
\draw[<->] (-4, 0) -- (4, 0) node[scale=0.7,below left= 0.25cm and -.28cm of center] {$x$};
\draw[->] (0,0 ) -- (0, 4) node[right,scale=0.7] {$y$};
%----------Draw Axis numbers by hand using a loop----------%
\foreach \x/\xtext in {0,0.5,1,1.5,2,2.5,3,3.5,4}
\draw[shift={(\x,0)}] (0pt,2pt) -- (0pt,-2pt) node[scale=0.55,below] {$\xtext$};

\foreach \x/\xtext in {0.5,1,1.5,2,2.5,3,3.5,4}
\draw[shift={(-\x,0)}] (0pt,2pt) -- (0pt,-2pt) node[scale=0.55,below] {$-\xtext$};

\foreach \y/\ytext in {0.5,1,1.5,2,2.5,3,3.5}
\draw[shift={(0,\y)}] (2pt,0pt) -- (-2pt,0pt) node[scale=0.55,left] {$\ytext$};
%----------Draw lines with messages using nodes----------%
\draw [->] (logsum) -- node[name=yes,above,text width=2cm,midway,scale=0.5]  {$\alpha=\pi$} (quadratic2);
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}