R help - Dec 2002 - A beginner's problems with plotting

Hi,
How would I go about plotting all 8 columns of a data.frame on a simple line
graph. i.e. eight lines and sets of points, differentiated by line pattern or
colour)?

An what further arguments would I need to invoke a log scale on the y-axis of
that same plot (normal x-axis)?

Cheers, Jeremy

-----Original Message-----
Jeremy Z Butler wrote:
>Hi,
>How would I go about plotting all 8 columns of a data.frame on a simple
line
>graph. i.e. eight lines and sets of points, differentiated by line pattern
or
>colour)?
>
>An what further arguments would I need to invoke a log scale on the y-axis
of
>that same plot (normal x-axis)?
For example (a snippet from something I have been working on the last couple
of days)

plot(Nucs$Year,Nucs[[2]],type='b',xlim=c(first,last),pch=2,col=2,
ylim=c(min,max),xlab='',ylab='Releases, GBq/year',log=logax)
for (i in c(3:length(Nucs))){
	lines(Nucs$Year,Nucs[[i]],col=i)
	points(Nucs$Year,Nucs[[i]],col=i,pch=i)
}

Nucs is my data frame, Year is the X variable. I am setting up the plot and
plotting the first series with the plot command, Earlier in my script I have
calculated the min,max,first and last values, set them manually if you know
them. If the variable logax is set to 'y' (or maybe also 'Y')
then the y
axis is plottet logaritmic.

By the way, you might end up with one of the palette colors being white,
what you probably do not want... if that happens, run a 
palette(c('red','blue','green','yellow','orange','black','brown','violet','p
urple'))
before doing the plot.

(I am by no means an R-expert, somebody might have a better solution, but
this works fine for me.)

Morten

-- 
Morten Sickel
Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority
http://www.nrpa.no

>>>>> "Jeremy" == Jeremy Z Butler <jeremybutler at
paradise.net.nz>
>>>>>     on Fri, 13 Dec 2002 13:05:22 +1300 (NZDT) writes:

    Jeremy> How would I go about plotting all 8 columns of a
    Jeremy> data.frame on a simple line graph. i.e. eight lines
    Jeremy> and sets of points, differentiated by line pattern
    Jeremy> or colour)?

help(matplot) and its examples;
also as you might want a legend anyway 
help(legend) and its examples

{and there is a "lattice" way to do this...}

    Jeremy> An what further arguments would I need to invoke a
    Jeremy> log scale on the y-axis of that same plot (normal
    Jeremy> x-axis)?

matplot(........., log = "y")

Martin Maechler <maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch>
http://stat.ethz.ch/~maechler/