R plot() Function - Drawing Scatter Plots
The R plot() function is the most basic plotting function, used to create various graphics such as scatter plots, line charts, and more.
plot() is the entry point of the R graphics system; almost all visualizations start from it.
The syntax format of the plot() function is as follows:
plot(x, y, type = "p", main = "", xlab = "", ylab = "", col = "black")
Parameter description:
x, yThe coordinates of the data points.
typeGraph type: "p" (points), "l" (lines), "b" (both points and lines), "o" (overlaid).
mainThe graph title.
xlab, ylabThe x-axis and y-axis labels.
colColor.
Example
height <- c(160, 165, 170, 175, 180, 158, 172, 168, 178, 182)
weight <- c(55, 60, 65, 70, 80, 52, 68, 62, 75, 85)
# Draw scatter plot
plot(height, weight,
main = "Relationship between height and weight",
xlab = "Height (cm)",
ylab = "Weight (kg)",
col = "blue",
pch = 16) # pch=16 is a solid dot
# Add trend line
abline(lm(weight ~ height), col = "red", lwd = 2)
Running the above code will display a scatter plot and a red trend line.
plot() can also be used directly on data frames, automatically generating a scatter plot matrix between variables:
Example
print("iris scatter plot matrix:")
plot(iris[, 1:4],
col = iris$Species,
main = "Iris dataset scatter plot matrix")
Running the above code will generate a 4x4 scatter plot matrix, where points of different colors represent different iris species.
Other extensions
R Language Examples