The plot command will try to produce the appropriate plots based on the data type. The data that is defined above, though, is numeric data. You need to convert the data to factors to make sure that the plot command treats it in an appropriate way. The as.factor command is used to cast the data as factors and ensures that R treats it as discrete. R makes it easy to combine multiple plots into one overall graph, using either the par or layout function. With the par function, you can include the option mfrow=c (nrows, ncols) to create a matrix of nrows x ncols plots that are filled in by row. Mfcol=c (nrows, ncols) fills in the matrix by columns. Is it possible to obtain 3 plots in a single figure in R with a distribution as shown in the image below? The plots must have the same width, and plot C should be centered.
The plot()
function is used to draw points (markers) in a diagram.
The function takes parameters for specifying points in the diagram.
Parameter 1 specifies points on the x-axis.
Parameter 2 specifies points on the y-axis.
At its simplest, you can use the plot()
function to plot two numbers against each other:
Draw one point in the diagram, at position (1) and position (3):
Result:
Try it Yourself »To draw more points, use vectors:
Draw two points in the diagram, one at position (1, 3) and one in position (8, 10):
Result:
Try it Yourself »You can plot as many points as you like, just make sure you have the same number of points in both axis:
Result:
Try it Yourself »For better organization, when you have many values, it is better to use variables:
Result:
Try it Yourself »If you want to draw dots in a sequence, on both the x-axis and the y-axis, use the :
operator:
Result:
Try it Yourself »The plot()
function also takes a type
parameter with the value l
to draw a line to connect all the points in the diagram:
Result:
Try it Yourself »The plot()
function also accept other parameters, such as main
, xlab
and ylab
if you want to customize the graph with a main title and different labels for the x and y-axis:
Result:
Try it Yourself »There are many other parameters you can use to change the appearance of the points.
Use col='color'
to add a color to the points:
Result:
Try it Yourself »Use cex=number
to change the size of the points (1
is default, while 0.5
means 50% smaller, and 2
means 100% larger):
Result:
Try it Yourself »Use pch
with a value from 0 to 25 to change the point shape format:
Result:
Try it Yourself »The values of the pch
parameter ranges from 0 to 25, which means that we can choose up to 26 different types of point shapes: