Basic skills in R: Basic graphics
Summary of options to change features of a figure
The function par()
is used to inspect and specify global graphics parameters that affect all plots in an R session. These parameters can be overridden when they are specified as arguments to specific plotting functions. For example,
mfrow(r,c)
: number of plots per row, column (plots are filled row-wise);mfcol(r,c)
: number of plots per row, column (plots are filled column-wise).
Below is an overview of parameters that can be changed (globally or locally).
pch
|
The plot character parameter is a character or a number, usually between 1 and 25. that informs the graphics system which symbol to use to draw the points that it plots; see the figure below |
cex = f cex.axis cex.lab cex.main cex.sub |
The character expansion (scale factor f ) is the desired size of text characters (including plotting characters) relative to the default text size. It can also used for axis annotation, \(x\) and \(y\) labels, main title, and sub-title, respectively. |
col = c col.axis col.lab col.main col.sub |
R has 657 built-in colours. You can see all the names by typing the instruction colors() in the console. It can also used for axis annotation, \(x\) and \(y\) labels, main title, and sub-title, respectively. |
font = s font.axis font.lab font.main font.sub |
The font is an integer s which specifies which font to use for text. If possible, device drivers arrange so that 1 corresponds to plain text, 2 to bold face, 3 to italic, 4 to bold italic and 5 to a symbol font (which include Greek letters). |
lty |
The line type parameter describes the style of line drawing. It is either a number or a word from the list below.![]() |
lwd = n |
The line width parameter is just a number n specifying the width of the line. The default value is 1. Not surprisingly, larger values produce thicker lines and smaller values produce thinner lines. |
bg = c |
The background colour is set to the colour name c . |
asp = 1 |
The aspect ratio of the figure becomes 1:1. Use asp = "r" to reset the aspect ratio to the default value. |
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