An Introduction to Basic Plotting Tools

Abstract

We have demonstrated the use of R tools for importing data, manipulating data, extracting subsets of data, and making simple calculations, such as mean, variance, standard deviation, and the like. In this chapter, we introduce basic graph plotting tools. If you are interested in only simple graphing, this chapter will suffice; however, to construct more sophisticated graphs, or to add more complicated embellishments such as tick marks, or specialized fonts and font sizes, to basic graphs, you will need the more advanced plotting techniques presented in Chapters 7 and 8. A discussion of elementary plotting tools may seem out of place at this stage, rather than being included in the sections on graphing beginning with Chapter 7. However, when teaching the material presented in this book, we became aware that, after discussing the relatively pedestrian material of the first four sections, the course participants were eagerly awaiting the lively, more visual, and easier, plotting tools. Therefore, we present a first encounter with graphing here, which allows the presentation of the more complex subjects in the next chapter with the aid of active tools such as the plot function.