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:
type
what 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.
main
an overall title for the plot: see title.
sub
a sub title for the plot: see title.
xlab
a title for the x axis: see title.
ylab
a 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.

See Also

plot.default, plot.formula and other methods; points, lines, par.

Examples

data(cars)
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")
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