R help - Sep 2008 - Why horizontal bars instead of a line

Hey list!


It looks simple, though it's not possible for me to plot the following
properly:

(some made-up data)

GrSe	Clone1	Clone2	Clone3	Clone4	Clone...
G1999	2	3	6	5
G2000	2	5	7	4
G2001	5	3	7	3
G2002	4	5	8	3
G...



GrSe=Growing Season.

I've read the file as "x" and then tried:	 plot(x$GrSe,x$Clone1)

The output is 4 horizontal bars. Even if I write
plot(x$GrSe,x$Clone1,type="n") R is still plotting!
I figured already that if I delete the "G" in front of the years
it'll
work, however, I'd like to keep the "G".
Is that possible?

Hope it is an appropriate question for the list.

Thanks,
Stefan




	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

Since x$GrSe isn't a number, what do you expect R to do?

On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 11:28 AM, Schreiber, Stefan
<Stefan.Schreiber at ales.ualberta.ca> wrote:
> Hey list!
>
>
> It looks simple, though it's not possible for me to plot the following
> properly:
>
> (some made-up data)
>
> GrSe    Clone1  Clone2  Clone3  Clone4  Clone...
> G1999   2       3       6       5
> G2000   2       5       7       4
> G2001   5       3       7       3
> G2002   4       5       8       3
> G...
>
>
>
> GrSe=Growing Season.
>
> I've read the file as "x" and then tried:       
plot(x$GrSe,x$Clone1)
>
> The output is 4 horizontal bars. Even if I write
> plot(x$GrSe,x$Clone1,type="n") R is still plotting!
> I figured already that if I delete the "G" in front of the years
it'll
> work, however, I'd like to keep the "G".
> Is that possible?
>
> Hope it is an appropriate question for the list.
>
> Thanks,
> Stefan
>
>
>


-- 
Sarah Goslee
http://www.functionaldiversity.org

Remember that computers are not as smart as you.  Some smart people have written
instructions for the computer on what to do in certain cases, but they can't
anticipate everything, so when you tell the computer to do something that was
different from what is anticipated, it either gives an error or the results of a
wrong guess.

In your case, since GrSe has a G in the front and your data is probably in a
data frame, the plot function sees a factor (generally what gets created
automatically when characters are seen) and passes the data to plot.factor which
plots boxplots (and with 1 point per year, the 5 number summary for the boxplot
gives all the same value, hence the horizontal line).

What you probably want to do is to plot your clone data against a numerical
representation of the year (without the G), but suppress the axis labels and add
the labels yourself (with the G), see ?axis for detail on doing this.

Hope this helps,

--
Gregory (Greg) L. Snow Ph.D.
Statistical Data Center
Intermountain Healthcare
greg.snow at imail.org
801.408.8111

> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-
> project.org] On Behalf Of Schreiber, Stefan
> Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2008 9:28 AM
> To: r-help at r-project.org
> Subject: [R] Why horizontal bars instead of a line
>
> Hey list!
>
>
> It looks simple, though it's not possible for me to plot the following
> properly:
>
> (some made-up data)
>
> GrSe    Clone1  Clone2  Clone3  Clone4  Clone...
> G1999   2       3       6       5
> G2000   2       5       7       4
> G2001   5       3       7       3
> G2002   4       5       8       3
> G...
>
>
>
> GrSe=Growing Season.
>
> I've read the file as "x" and then tried:       
plot(x$GrSe,x$Clone1)
>
> The output is 4 horizontal bars. Even if I write
> plot(x$GrSe,x$Clone1,type="n") R is still plotting!
> I figured already that if I delete the "G" in front of the years
it'll
> work, however, I'd like to keep the "G".
> Is that possible?
>
> Hope it is an appropriate question for the list.
>
> Thanks,
> Stefan
>
>
>
>
>         [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
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