R help - Jun 2005 - Dirty Rotten Hack. (reversing tickmarks on axes?)

I feel dirty.


I have some graphs I'm building to communicate chargeback rates and service
usage for our backup system here at the University of Florida.  These come
down to daily data points on a graph of number-of-bytes transferred and
stored. 

Since we chargeback on the same basis (price per MB this, price per KB that)
the same chart with a different scale can be used to communicate bytes and
dollars. I set about trying to accomplish this like so:

http://nersp.nerdc.ufl.edu/~asr/media/r-foo/try1.png

Those axes are a little messy. I tried nudging them around

http://nersp.nerdc.ufl.edu/~asr/media/r-foo/try2.png

which is better but not good.  What I really want to do is tell my axis()
function to reverse the tick direction:  put your ticks and labels
"inside"
the graph.  Something like

http://nersp.nerdc.ufl.edu/~asr/media/r-foo/dirty-hack.png

which I accomplished by telling axis() 'line=-47.7'. 

Eugh.

Note that the distance between the left side and the right is different
between the right side to the left. :)   I don't particularly object to
this,
when you abuse a tool in this manner you need to expect oddities.

I've wandered through the mailing list logs, and haven't seen reference
to
this particular desire.  Am I alone? :) 



- Allen S. Rout

?par tck

Make tck a positive fraction <.5 (e.g. .02) in your call.

-- Bert Gunter
Genentech Non-Clinical Statistics
South San Francisco, CA
 
"The business of the statistician is to catalyze the scientific learning
process."  - George E. P. Box
 
 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch 
> [mailto:r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of Allen S. Rout
> Sent: Friday, June 03, 2005 9:51 AM
> To: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
> Subject: [R] Dirty Rotten Hack. (reversing tickmarks on axes?)
> 
> 
> I feel dirty.
> 
> 
> I have some graphs I'm building to communicate chargeback 
> rates and service
> usage for our backup system here at the University of 
> Florida.  These come
> down to daily data points on a graph of number-of-bytes 
> transferred and
> stored. 
> 
> Since we chargeback on the same basis (price per MB this, 
> price per KB that)
> the same chart with a different scale can be used to 
> communicate bytes and
> dollars. I set about trying to accomplish this like so:
> 
> http://nersp.nerdc.ufl.edu/~asr/media/r-foo/try1.png
> 
> Those axes are a little messy. I tried nudging them around
> 
> http://nersp.nerdc.ufl.edu/~asr/media/r-foo/try2.png
> 
> which is better but not good.  What I really want to do is 
> tell my axis()
> function to reverse the tick direction:  put your ticks and 
> labels "inside"
> the graph.  Something like
> 
> http://nersp.nerdc.ufl.edu/~asr/media/r-foo/dirty-hack.png
> 
> which I accomplished by telling axis() 'line=-47.7'. 
> 
> Eugh.
> 
> Note that the distance between the left side and the right is 
> different
> between the right side to the left. :)   I don't particularly 
> object to this,
> when you abuse a tool in this manner you need to expect oddities.
> 
> I've wandered through the mailing list logs, and haven't seen 
> reference to
> this particular desire.  Am I alone? :) 
> 
> 
> 
> - Allen S. Rout
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide! 
> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>

"Allen S. Rout" <asr at ufl.edu> writes:
> I feel dirty.
> 
> 
> I have some graphs I'm building to communicate chargeback rates and
service
> usage for our backup system here at the University of Florida.  These come
> down to daily data points on a graph of number-of-bytes transferred and
> stored. 
> 
> Since we chargeback on the same basis (price per MB this, price per KB
that)
> the same chart with a different scale can be used to communicate bytes and
> dollars. I set about trying to accomplish this like so:
> 
> http://nersp.nerdc.ufl.edu/~asr/media/r-foo/try1.png
> 
> Those axes are a little messy. I tried nudging them around
> 
> http://nersp.nerdc.ufl.edu/~asr/media/r-foo/try2.png
> 
> which is better but not good.  What I really want to do is tell my axis()
> function to reverse the tick direction:  put your ticks and labels
"inside"
> the graph.  Something like
> 
> http://nersp.nerdc.ufl.edu/~asr/media/r-foo/dirty-hack.png
> 
> which I accomplished by telling axis() 'line=-47.7'. 
> 
> Eugh.
> 
> Note that the distance between the left side and the right is different
> between the right side to the left. :)   I don't particularly object to
this,
> when you abuse a tool in this manner you need to expect oddities.
> 
> I've wandered through the mailing list logs, and haven't seen
reference to
> this particular desire.  Am I alone? :) 
Possibly in space, but not in time and space: Someone seems to have
been there before. Check out

plot(0,tcl=.5,mgp=c(-3,-2,0))


-- 
   O__  ---- Peter Dalgaard             Blegdamsvej 3  
  c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics     2200 Cph. N   
 (*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen   Denmark      Ph: (+45) 35327918
~~~~~~~~~~ - (p.dalgaard at biostat.ku.dk)             FAX: (+45) 35327907