R Tutorial | R Interface | Data Input | Data Management | Statistics | Advanced Statistics | Graphs | Advanced Graphs
< Advanced Graphs Graphical Parameters
You can customize many features of your graphs (fonts, colors, axes, titles) through
Graphical Parameters
graphic options.
Axes and Text
Combining Plots One way is to specify these options in through the par( ) function. If you set parameter
Lattice Graphs values here, the changes will be in effect for the rest of the session or until you change
ggplot2 Graphs them again. The format is par(optionname=value, optionname=value, ...)
Probability Plots
Mosaic Plots
# Set a graphical parameter using par()
Correlograms
Interactive Graphs
par() # view current settings
opar <- par() # make a copy of current settings
par(col.lab="red") # red x and y labels
hist(mtcars$mpg) # create a plot with these new settings
par(opar) # restore original settings
A second way to specify graphical parameters is by providing the optionname=value
pairs directly to a high level plotting function. In this case, the options are only in effect
for that specific graph.
R in Action
# Set a graphical parameter within the plotting function
hist(mtcars$mpg, col.lab="red")
See the help for a specific high level plotting function (e.g. plot, hist, boxplot) to
R in Action (2nd ed) determine which graphical parameters can be set this way.
significantly expands upon this
The remainder of this section describes some of the more important graphical
material. Use promo code ria38
for a 38% discount. parameters that you can set.
Text and Symbol Size
The following options can be used to control text and symbol size in graphs.
option description
cex number indicating the amount by which plotting text and
symbols should be scaled relative to the default. 1=default, 1.5
is 50% larger, 0.5 is 50% smaller, etc.
cex.axis magnification of axis annotation relative to cex
cex.lab magnification of x and y labels relative to cex
cex.main magnification of titles relative to cex
cex.sub magnification of subtitles relative to cex
Plotting Symbols
Use the pch= option to specify symbols to use when plotting points. For symbols 21
through 25, specify border color (col=) and fill color (bg=).
Lines
You can change lines using the following options. This is particularly useful for
reference lines, axes, and fit lines.
option description
lty line type. see the chart below.
lwd line width relative to the default (default=1). 2 is twice as wide.
Colors
Options that specify colors include the following.
option description
col Default plotting color. Some functions (e.g. lines) accept a
vector of values that are recycled.
col.axis color for axis annotation
col.lab color for x and y labels
col.main color for titles
col.sub color for subtitles
fg plot foreground color (axes, boxes - also sets col= to same)
bg plot background color
You can specify colors in R by index, name, hexadecimal, or RGB.
For example col=1, col="white", and col="#FFFFFF" are equivalent.
The following chart was produced with code developed by Earl F. Glynn. See his Color
Chart for all the details you would ever need about using colors in R.
You can also create a vector of n contiguous colors using the functions rainbow(n),
heat.colors(n), terrain.colors(n), topo.colors(n), and cm.colors(n).
colors() returns all available color names.
Fonts
You can easily set font size and style, but font family is a bit more complicated.
option description
font Integer specifying font to use for text.
1=plain, 2=bold, 3=italic, 4=bold italic, 5=symbol
font.axis font for axis annotation
font.lab font for x and y labels
font.main font for titles
font.sub font for subtitles
ps font point size (roughly 1/72 inch)
text size=ps*cex
family font family for drawing text. Standard values are "serif",
"sans", "mono", "symbol". Mapping is device dependent.
In windows, mono is mapped to "TT Courier New", serif is mapped to"TT Times New
Roman", sans is mapped to "TT Arial", mono is mapped to "TT Courier New", and
symbol is mapped to "TT Symbol" (TT=True Type). You can add your own mappings.
# Type family examples - creating new mappings
plot(1:10,1:10,type="n")
windowsFonts(
A=windowsFont("Arial Black"),
B=windowsFont("Bookman Old Style"),
C=windowsFont("Comic Sans MS"),
D=windowsFont("Symbol")
)
text(3,3,"Hello World Default")
text(4,4,family="A","Hello World from Arial Black")
text(5,5,family="B","Hello World from Bookman Old Style")
text(6,6,family="C","Hello World from Comic Sans MS")
text(7,7,family="D", "Hello World from Symbol")
click to view
Margins and Graph Size
You can control the margin size using the following parameters.
option description
mar numerical vector indicating margin size c(bottom, left, top, right)
in lines. default = c(5, 4, 4, 2) + 0.1
mai numerical vector indicating margin size c(bottom, left, top, right)
in inches
pin plot dimensions (width, height) in inches
For complete information on margins, see Earl F. Glynn's margin tutorial.
Going Further
See help(par) for more information on graphical parameters. The customization of
plotting axes and text annotations are covered next section.
To Practice
Try this course on making graphs in R.
Copyright © 2017 Robert I. Kabacoff, Ph.D. | Sitemap