R: Generic X-Y Plotting

plot {graphics}

R Documentation

Generic X-Y Plotting

Description

Generic function for plotting of R objects. For more details about the graphical parameter arguments, see par.

Usage

plot(x, y, ...)

Arguments

x

the coordinates of points in the plot. Alternatively, a single plotting structure, function or any R object with a plot method can be provided.

y

the y coordinates of points in the plot, optional if x is an appropriate structure.

...

graphical parameters can be given as arguments to plot. Many methods will also accept the following arguments:

\item

typewhat type of plot should be drawn. Possible types are

"p" for points,
"l" for lines,
"b" for both,
"c" for the lines part alone of "b",
"o" for both “overplotted”,
"h" for “histogram” like (or “high-density”) vertical lines,
"s" for stair steps,
"S" for other steps, see Details below,
"n" for no plotting.

All other types give a warning or an error; using, e.g., type = "punkte" being equivalent to type = "p" for S compatibility. \itemmainan overall title for the plot: see title. \itemsuba sub title for the plot: see title. \itemxlaba title for the x axis: see title. \itemylaba title for the y axis: see title.

Details

For simple scatter plots, plot.default will be used. However, there are plot methods for many R objects, including functions, data.frames, density objects, etc. Use methods(plot) and the documentation for these.

The two step types differ in their x-y preference: Going from (x1,y1) to (x2,y2) with x1 < x2, type = "s" moves first horizontal, then vertical, whereas type = "S" moves the other way around.

Examples

plot(cars)
lines(lowess(cars))

plot(sin, -pi, 2*pi)

## Discrete Distribution Plot:
plot(table(rpois(100,5)), type = "h", col = "red", lwd=10,
     main="rpois(100,lambda=5)")

## Simple quantiles/ECDF, see ecdf() {library(stats)} for a better one:
plot(x <- sort(rnorm(47)), type = "s", main = "plot(x, type = \"s\")")
points(x, cex = .5, col = "dark red")