plot.default {graphics} | R Documentation |
The Default Scatterplot Function
Description
Draw a scatter plot with decorations such as axes and titles in the active graphics window.
Usage
## Default S3 method:
plot(x, y = NULL, type = "p", xlim = NULL, ylim = NULL,
log = "", main = NULL, sub = NULL, xlab = NULL, ylab = NULL,
ann = par("ann"), axes = TRUE, frame.plot = axes,
panel.first = NULL, panel.last = NULL, asp = NA,
xgap.axis = NA, ygap.axis = NA,
...)
Arguments
x , y |
the |
type |
1-character string giving the type of plot desired. The
following values are possible, for details, see |
xlim |
the x limits (x1, x2) of the plot. Note that The default value, |
ylim |
the y limits of the plot. |
log |
a character string which contains |
main |
a main title for the plot, see also |
sub |
a subtitle for the plot. |
xlab |
a label for the x axis, defaults to a description of |
ylab |
a label for the y axis, defaults to a description of |
ann |
a logical value indicating whether the default annotation (title and x and y axis labels) should appear on the plot. |
axes |
a logical value indicating whether both axes should be drawn on
the plot. Use graphical parameter |
frame.plot |
a logical indicating whether a box should be drawn around the plot. |
panel.first |
an ‘expression’ to be evaluated after the
plot axes are set up but before any plotting takes place. This can
be useful for drawing background grids or scatterplot smooths. Note
that this works by lazy evaluation: passing this argument from other
|
panel.last |
an expression to be evaluated after plotting has
taken place but before the axes, title and box are added. See the
comments about |
asp |
the |
xgap.axis , ygap.axis |
the |
... |
other graphical parameters (see |
Details
Commonly used graphical parameters are:
col
The colors for lines and points. Multiple colors can be specified so that each point can be given its own color. If there are fewer colors than points they are recycled in the standard fashion. Lines will all be plotted in the first colour specified.
bg
a vector of background colors for open plot symbols, see
points
. Note: this is not the same setting aspar("bg")
.pch
a vector of plotting characters or symbols: see
points
.cex
a numerical vector giving the amount by which plotting characters and symbols should be scaled relative to the default. This works as a multiple of
par("cex")
.NULL
andNA
are equivalent to1.0
. Note that this does not affect annotation: see below.lty
a vector of line types, see
par
.cex.main
,col.lab
,font.sub
, etcsettings for main- and sub-title and axis annotation, see
title
andpar
.lwd
a vector of line widths, see
par
.
Note
The presence of panel.first
and panel.last
is a
historical anomaly: default plots do not have ‘panels’, unlike
e.g. pairs
plots. For more control, use lower-level
plotting functions: plot.default
calls in turn some of
plot.new
, plot.window
,
plot.xy
, axis
, box
and
title
, and plots can be built up by calling these
individually, or by calling plot(type = "n")
and adding further
elements.
The plot
generic was moved from the graphics package to
the base package in R 4.0.0. It is currently re-exported from
the graphics namespace to allow packages importing it from there
to continue working, but this may change in future versions of R.
References
Becker, R. A., Chambers, J. M. and Wilks, A. R. (1988) The New S Language. Wadsworth & Brooks/Cole.
Cleveland, W. S. (1985) The Elements of Graphing Data. Monterey, CA: Wadsworth.
Murrell, P. (2005) R Graphics. Chapman & Hall/CRC Press.
See Also
plot
, plot.window
, xy.coords
.
For thousands of points, consider using smoothScatter
instead.
Examples
Speed <- cars$speed
Distance <- cars$dist
plot(Speed, Distance, panel.first = grid(8, 8),
pch = 0, cex = 1.2, col = "blue")
plot(Speed, Distance,
panel.first = lines(stats::lowess(Speed, Distance), lty = "dashed"),
pch = 0, cex = 1.2, col = "blue")
## Show the different plot types
x <- 0:12
y <- sin(pi/5 * x)
op <- par(mfrow = c(3,3), mar = .1+ c(2,2,3,1))
for (tp in c("p","l","b", "c","o","h", "s","S","n")) {
plot(y ~ x, type = tp, main = paste0("plot(*, type = \"", tp, "\")"))
if(tp == "S") {
lines(x, y, type = "s", col = "red", lty = 2)
mtext("lines(*, type = \"s\", ...)", col = "red", cex = 0.8)
}
}
par(op)
##--- Log-Log Plot with custom axes
lx <- seq(1, 5, length.out = 41)
yl <- expression(e^{-frac(1,2) * {log[10](x)}^2})
y <- exp(-.5*lx^2)
op <- par(mfrow = c(2,1), mar = par("mar")-c(1,0,2,0), mgp = c(2, .7, 0))
plot(10^lx, y, log = "xy", type = "l", col = "purple",
main = "Log-Log plot", ylab = yl, xlab = "x")
plot(10^lx, y, log = "xy", type = "o", pch = ".", col = "forestgreen",
main = "Log-Log plot with custom axes", ylab = yl, xlab = "x",
axes = FALSE, frame.plot = TRUE)
my.at <- 10^(1:5)
axis(1, at = my.at, labels = formatC(my.at, format = "fg"))
e.y <- -5:-1 ; at.y <- 10^e.y
axis(2, at = at.y, col.axis = "red", las = 1,
labels = as.expression(lapply(e.y, function(E) bquote(10^.(E)))))
par(op)