R help - Jun 2008 - Creating a "simple" Radar/Spider Plot from Statgraphics

I'm new to R - and trying to create a plot similiar to the spider plot at 
http://www.statgraphics.com/eda.htm#radar .  

I can't figure out several things... most of which I would think would be 
straightforward....

How can I change the lines for each series plotted instead of creating a 
filled area?

How can I get the labels for each of the radial axes at the outside of the 
plot instead of on a small circle in the middle?

Is there an easy way to get a legend like the sample plot?

Here's my attempt so far, using the USJudgeRating dataset... I'm sure
that
there's something simple that I'm missing....

 stars(USJudgeRatings[1:2,1:9],locations = 0:1, scale=FALSE, 
draw.segments=FALSE,
         col.segments=1:5,col.stars=0,key.loc=0:1,
          main="Radar/Spider Plot\nSee 
http://www.statgraphics.com/eda.htm#radar",full=TRUE)

What I really want to do is plot a dataset like this one:

Year     Below   Basic   Proficient   Advanced
2005     10      25      30           35
2006     8       21      41           30
2007     15      24      48           14
2008     14      19      42           25

and get a graphic with 4 superimposed stars of different colors superimposed 
showing the shape of the distribution for each year.  The data is 
percentsges of students scoring in each category, summing to 100.  There are 
actually scores for Literacy and Math, so I might display 8 radii instead of 
the 4 above. And the dataset/graph would be repeated for comparing various 
subpopulations.

Any pointers would be welcomed!

Thanks!

Albert Crosby
Springdale Public Schools
Springdale, Arkansas

	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

Albert Crosby <acrosby <at> sdale.org> writes:
> 
> I'm new to R - and trying to create a plot similiar to the spider plot
at
> http://www.statgraphics.com/eda.htm#radar .  
> 
> I can't figure out several things... most of which I would think would
be
> straightforward....
> 
> How can I change the lines for each series plotted instead of creating a 
> filled area?
> 
> How can I get the labels for each of the radial axes at the outside of the 
> plot instead of on a small circle in the middle?
> 
I have not tried it, but you might check package plotrix, and the examples on

http://addictedtor.free.fr/graphiques/thumbs.php?sort=keywords


Dieter

Albert Crosby wrote:
> I'm new to R - and trying to create a plot similiar to the spider plot
at
> http://www.statgraphics.com/eda.htm#radar .  
> 
> I can't figure out several things... most of which I would think would
be
> straightforward....
> 
> How can I change the lines for each series plotted instead of creating a 
> filled area?
> 
> How can I get the labels for each of the radial axes at the outside of the 
> plot instead of on a small circle in the middle?
> 
> Is there an easy way to get a legend like the sample plot?
> 
> Here's my attempt so far, using the USJudgeRating dataset... I'm
sure that
> there's something simple that I'm missing....
> 
>  stars(USJudgeRatings[1:2,1:9],locations = 0:1, scale=FALSE, 
> draw.segments=FALSE,
>          col.segments=1:5,col.stars=0,key.loc=0:1,
>           main="Radar/Spider Plot\nSee 
> http://www.statgraphics.com/eda.htm#radar",full=TRUE)
> 
> What I really want to do is plot a dataset like this one:
> 
> Year     Below   Basic   Proficient   Advanced
> 2005     10      25      30           35
> 2006     8       21      41           30
> 2007     15      24      48           14
> 2008     14      19      42           25
> 
> and get a graphic with 4 superimposed stars of different colors
superimposed
> showing the shape of the distribution for each year.  The data is 
> percentsges of students scoring in each category, summing to 100.  There
are
> actually scores for Literacy and Math, so I might display 8 radii instead
of
> the 4 above. And the dataset/graph would be repeated for comparing various 
> subpopulations.
> 
> Any pointers would be welcomed!
> 
Hi Albert,
Try this and it may be what you want:

# this just gets your data
radplot<-read.table("../radarplot.dat",header=TRUE)
library(plotrix)
radial.plot(radplot[,2:5],label.pos=c(0,pi/2,pi,3*pi/2),rp.type="p",
 
labels=c("Below","Basic","Proficient","Advanced"),main="Performance")
# let the legend extend beyond the plot
par(xpd=TRUE)
legend(-50,50,radplot[,1],col=1:4,lty=rep(1,4))
par(xpd=FALSE)

Jim