How to create basic plots (in R)
Task
Plotting is a huge topic with many options and variations, but the most foundational types of plots are a line plot and a scatterplot. How can we create those?
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Solution
We will create some fake data using vectors, for simplicity. But everything we show below works also if your data is in columns of a DataFrame.
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patient.id <- c(0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)
patient.height <- c(60, 64, 64, 65, 66, 66, 70, 72, 72, 76)
patient.weight <- c(141, 182, 169, 204, 138, 198, 180, 175, 244, 196)
We can make a line plot if we use the type="l" option (which is an “ell,” not a number one).
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plot(patient.id, patient.height, main="Patient heights", type="l")
We can create a scatterplot if we have two numerical columns, such as the height and weight in the data above.
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plot(patient.height, patient.weight, main = "Height vs. Weight")
Content last modified on 24 July 2023.
See a problem? Tell us or edit the source.
Contributed by:
- Elizabeth Czarniak (CZARNIA_ELIZ@bentley.edu)
- Nathan Carter (ncarter@bentley.edu)