plot.circular: Circular Data Plot

Description

Creates a plot of circular data points on the current graphics device. Data points are either plotted as points on the unit circle, or the range of the circle is divided into a specified number of bins, and points are stacked in the bins corresponding to the number of observations in each bin.

Usage

# S3 method for circular
plot(x, pch = 16, cex = 1, stack = FALSE,
  axes = TRUE, start.sep=0, sep = 0.025, shrink = 1,
  bins = NULL, ticks = FALSE, tcl = 0.025, tcl.text = 0.125,
  col = NULL, tol = 0.04, uin = NULL,
  xlim = c(-1, 1), ylim = c(-1, 1), digits = 2, units = NULL,
  template = NULL, zero = NULL, rotation = NULL, 
  main = NULL, sub=NULL, xlab = "", ylab = "", 
  control.circle=circle.control(), ...)

Value

A list with information on the plot: zero, rotation and next.points.

Arguments

x: a vector, matrix or data.frame. The object is coerced to class circular.
pch: point character to use. See help on par.
cex: point character size. See help on par.
stack: logical; if TRUE, points are stacked on the perimeter of the circle. Otherwise, all points are plotted on the perimeter of the circle. Default is FALSE.
axes: logical; if TRUE axes are plotted according to properties of x.
start.sep: constant used to specify the distance between the center of the point and the axis.
sep: constant used to specify the distance between stacked points, if stack==TRUE or in the case of more than one dataset. Default is 0.025; smaller values will create smaller spaces.
shrink: parameter that controls the size of the plotted circle. Default is 1. Larger values shrink the circle, while smaller values enlarge the circle.
bins: if stack==TRUE, bins is the number of arcs to partition the circle with.
ticks: logical; if TRUE ticks are plotted according to the value of bins.
tcl: length of the ticks.
tcl.text: The position of the axis labels.
col: color of the points. The values are recycled if needed.
tol: proportion of white space at the margins of plot.
uin: desired values for the units per inch parameter. If of length 1, the desired units per inch on the x axis.
xlim, ylim: the ranges to be encompassed by the x and y axes. Useful for centering the plot.
digits: number of digits used to print axis values.
main, sub, xlab, ylab: title, subtitle, x label and y label of the plot.
units: the units used in the plot.
template: the template used in the plot.
zero: the zero used in the plot.
rotation: the rotation used in the plot.
control.circle: parameters passed to plot.default in order to draw the circle. The function circle.control is used to set the parameters.
...: further parameters passed to points.default.

Author

Claudio Agostinelli and Ulric Lund

Details

When there are many closely distributed observations, stacking is recommended. When stacking the points, if there are many points in a particular bin, it may be necessary to shrink the plot of the circle so that all points fit. This is controlled with the parameter shrink. Generally the parameter sep does not need adjustment, however, when shrinking the plot, or for a very large number of observations, it may be helpful. Since version 0.3-9 the intervals are on the form [a,b).

Examples

Run this code

# Generate 100 observations from a von Mises distribution.
# with mean direction 0 and concentration 3.
data.vm <- rvonmises(n=100, mu=circular(0), kappa=3) 

# Plot data set. All points do not fit on plot.
plot(data.vm, stack=TRUE, bins=150) 

# Shrink the plot so that all points fit.
plot(data.vm, stack=TRUE, bins=150, shrink=1.5) 

# Recentering the figure in a different place
plot(data.vm, stack=TRUE, bins=150, xlim=c(-1,1.2), ylim=c(-1,0))

Run the code above in your browser using DataLab