psych (version 1.0-77)

ellipses: Plot data and 1 and 2 sigma correlation ellipses

Description

For teaching correlation, it is useful to draw ellipses around the mean to reflect the correlation. This variation of the ellipse function from John Fox's car package does so. Input may be either two vectors or a matrix or data.frame. In the latter cases, if the number of variables >2, then the ellipses are done in the pairs.panels function. Ellipses may be added to existing plots.

Usage

ellipses(x, y = NULL, add = FALSE, smooth=TRUE, lm=FALSE,data=TRUE, n = 2,span=2/3, iter=3, col = "red", xlab =NULL,ylab= NULL, ...)

Arguments

x

a vector,matrix, or data.frame

y

Optional second vector

add

Should a new plot be created, or should it be added to?

smooth

smooth = TRUE -> draw a loess fit

lm

lm=TRUE -> draw the linear fit

data

data=TRUE implies draw the data points

n

Should 1 or 2 ellipses be drawn

span

averaging window parameter for the lowess fit

iter

iteration parameter for lowess

col

color of ellipses (default is red

xlab

label for the x axis

ylab

label for the y axis

...

Other parameters for plotting

Value

• A single plot (for 2 vectors or data frames with fewer than 3 variables. Otherwise a call is made to pairs.panels.

Details

Ellipse dimensions are calculated from the correlation between the x and y variables and are scaled as sqrt(1+r) and sqrt(1-r).

References

Galton, Francis (1888), Co-relations and their measurement. Proceedings of the Royal Society. London Series, 45, 135-145.

See Also

pairs.panels

Examples

data(galton)
ellipses(galton,lm=TRUE)
ellipses(galton$parent,galton$child,xlab="Mid Parent Height",ylab="Child Height") #input are two vectors
data(sat.act)
ellipses(sat.act)  #shows the pairs.panels ellipses