R help - Dec 2017 - problem with the behaviour of dashed lines in R plots

dear R users,

I am performing a linear regression with lm, and I would like to plot 
the regressor in dashed lines. I know that the lty=2 option is the way 
out, but it has a very strange behaviour: the line starts dashed but 
then the spaces between each dash becomes very tiny and so the line 
become somehow continuous for the human eye. Do you know how to fix that 
problem, in order to have a dashed line with big enough spaces between 
the dashes?
Here is a MWE (don't mind if clearly a linear model will not fit these 
"fake randomly generated" data).

Also, changing the plot(...,type="l") to abline(regressor,lty=2,...) 
helps and draw a pure dashed line but it is impossible to force it to 
stay in the bounds of the data.
Changing to line instead shows the same problem as mentioned here in the 
MWE.


pdf("reproducableex.pdf")
df1<-data.frame(B=runif(20,1.4,1.6),A=runif(20,-19.5,-9.8))
regressor<-lm(A~B,data = df1)
plot(df1$B,predict(regressor,df1),type="l", col="black", 
mgp=c(2,0.5,0),cex.lab=1.6, lwd=2, 
lty=2,xlim=range(c(1.2,1.7)),ylim=rev(range(c(-19,-8))))
par(new = TRUE)
plot(df1$B,as.numeric(df1$A),type="p", col="black", 
mgp=c(2,0.5,0),cex.lab=1.6,cex=2, xlab = "", ylab = 
"",xlim=range(c(1.2,1.7)),ylim=rev(range(c(-19,-8))),pch=17)
box(lwd=3)
dev.off()


Thanks in advance, best regards


Jean-Philippe Fontaine

-- 
Jean-Philippe Fontaine
PhD Student in Astroparticle Physics,
Gran Sasso Science Institute (GSSI),
Viale Francesco Crispi 7,
67100 L'Aquila, Italy
Mobile: +393487128593, +33615653774

Hi,

It's because you are plotting a line between each of the points in
your data frame, and they are very close together:
> cbind(df1$B,predict(regressor,df1))
       [,1]      [,2]
1  1.410832 -13.96466
2  1.589383 -15.21169
3  1.446662 -14.21491
4  1.488665 -14.50826
5  1.487035 -14.49687
6  1.497347 -14.56890
7  1.458070 -14.29458
8  1.568134 -15.06328
9  1.543364 -14.89029
10 1.513473 -14.68152
11 1.465462 -14.34621
12 1.506752 -14.63458
13 1.434703 -14.13139
14 1.584011 -15.17417
15 1.585621 -15.18542
16 1.542410 -14.88362
17 1.430091 -14.09917
18 1.474529 -14.40953
19 1.431341 -14.10790
20 1.425015 -14.06372

If instead you use abline(regressor, lty=2) you will get a
nice-looking dashed line.

Or, if you want only the data extent, you could use just the points
for the minimum and maximum values of x.

Sarah

On Mon, Dec 4, 2017 at 12:13 PM, jean-philippe
<jeanphilippe.fontaine at gssi.infn.it> wrote:
> dear R users,
>
> I am performing a linear regression with lm, and I would like to plot the
> regressor in dashed lines. I know that the lty=2 option is the way out, but
> it has a very strange behaviour: the line starts dashed but then the spaces
> between each dash becomes very tiny and so the line become somehow
> continuous for the human eye. Do you know how to fix that problem, in order
> to have a dashed line with big enough spaces between the dashes?
> Here is a MWE (don't mind if clearly a linear model will not fit these
"fake
> randomly generated" data).
>
> Also, changing the plot(...,type="l") to
abline(regressor,lty=2,...) helps
> and draw a pure dashed line but it is impossible to force it to stay in the
> bounds of the data.
> Changing to line instead shows the same problem as mentioned here in the
> MWE.
>
>
> pdf("reproducableex.pdf")
> df1<-data.frame(B=runif(20,1.4,1.6),A=runif(20,-19.5,-9.8))
> regressor<-lm(A~B,data = df1)
> plot(df1$B,predict(regressor,df1),type="l",
col="black",
> mgp=c(2,0.5,0),cex.lab=1.6, lwd=2,
> lty=2,xlim=range(c(1.2,1.7)),ylim=rev(range(c(-19,-8))))
> par(new = TRUE)
> plot(df1$B,as.numeric(df1$A),type="p", col="black",
> mgp=c(2,0.5,0),cex.lab=1.6,cex=2, xlab = "", ylab >
"",xlim=range(c(1.2,1.7)),ylim=rev(range(c(-19,-8))),pch=17)
> box(lwd=3)
> dev.off()
>
>
> Thanks in advance, best regards
>
>
> Jean-Philippe Fontaine
>

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

hi Sarah,

Thanks a lot for having taken time to answer me and for your reply. I 
wonder how I missed this solution. Indeed plotting the line with the 2 
extreme data points works perfectly.


Best,


Jean-Philippe Fontaine



On 04/12/2017 18:30, Sarah Goslee wrote:
> It's because you are plotting a line between each of the points in
> your data frame, and they are very close togethe
-- 
Jean-Philippe Fontaine
PhD Student in Astroparticle Physics,
Gran Sasso Science Institute (GSSI),
Viale Francesco Crispi 7,
67100 L'Aquila, Italy
Mobile: +393487128593, +33615653774

If you can change the line colour try this

options(mgp=c(2,0.5,0),cex.lab=1.6)

plot(df1$B, predict(regressor,df1),
     type="l",
     col="grey",
     lwd=2,
     lty=1,
     xlim=range(c(1.2,1.7)),
     ylim=rev(range(c(-19,-8))))
     
lines(df1$B,as.numeric(df1$A),
      type="p",
      col="black",
      cex=2,
      pch=17)

box(lwd=3)

Saves typing by using options

Regards

Duncan

Duncan Mackay
Department of Agronomy and Soil Science
University of New England
Armidale NSW 2350


-----Original Message-----
From: R-help [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org] On Behalf Of
jean-philippe
Sent: Tuesday, 5 December 2017 04:14
To: R mailing list
Subject: [R] problem with the behaviour of dashed lines in R plots

dear R users,

I am performing a linear regression with lm, and I would like to plot 
the regressor in dashed lines. I know that the lty=2 option is the way 
out, but it has a very strange behaviour: the line starts dashed but 
then the spaces between each dash becomes very tiny and so the line 
become somehow continuous for the human eye. Do you know how to fix that 
problem, in order to have a dashed line with big enough spaces between 
the dashes?
Here is a MWE (don't mind if clearly a linear model will not fit these 
"fake randomly generated" data).

Also, changing the plot(...,type="l") to abline(regressor,lty=2,...) 
helps and draw a pure dashed line but it is impossible to force it to 
stay in the bounds of the data.
Changing to line instead shows the same problem as mentioned here in the 
MWE.


pdf("reproducableex.pdf")
df1<-data.frame(B=runif(20,1.4,1.6),A=runif(20,-19.5,-9.8))
regressor<-lm(A~B,data = df1)
plot(df1$B,predict(regressor,df1),type="l", col="black", 
mgp=c(2,0.5,0),cex.lab=1.6, lwd=2, 
lty=2,xlim=range(c(1.2,1.7)),ylim=rev(range(c(-19,-8))))
par(new = TRUE)
plot(df1$B,as.numeric(df1$A),type="p", col="black", 
mgp=c(2,0.5,0),cex.lab=1.6,cex=2, xlab = "", ylab = 
"",xlim=range(c(1.2,1.7)),ylim=rev(range(c(-19,-8))),pch=17)
box(lwd=3)
dev.off()


Thanks in advance, best regards


Jean-Philippe Fontaine

-- 
Jean-Philippe Fontaine
PhD Student in Astroparticle Physics,
Gran Sasso Science Institute (GSSI),
Viale Francesco Crispi 7,
67100 L'Aquila, Italy
Mobile: +393487128593, +33615653774

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