battleship.plot: Display a matrix of values as the widths of stacked rectangles

Description

battleship.plot displays a matrix of rectangles, with widths proportional to the values in x. The values are scaled so that half the width of the largest rectangle is equal to maxxspan in user units. This prevents the rectangles from overlapping. The user can adjust the spacing of the stacks of rectangles by changing maxxspan. Similarly, maxyspan controls the spacing between rectangles in the vertical direction.

The labels for each stack of plots (the columns of x) are displayed at the top of the plot, angled at 45 degrees. The labels for each row of rectangles in the stacks (the rows of x) are displayed at the left. Long labels for either may require adjusting the mar argument.

The function will try to extract the labels xaxlab and yaxlab from the matrix column and row names respectively if none are passed.

Usage

battleship.plot(x,mar=c(2,5,5,1),col="white",border="black",
 main="",xlab="",ylab="",xaxlab=NULL,yaxlab=NULL,cex.labels=1,
 maxxspan=0.45,maxyspan=0.45)

Value

nil

Arguments

x: A matrix or data frame containing numeric values. See the example.
mar: Margins for the plot.
col: The fill colors for the rectangles.
border: The border colors for the rectangles.
main: The title for the plot (i.e. main).
xlab,ylab: The x and y axis labels.
xaxlab,yaxlab: Optional labels for the rows and columns.
cex.labels: Character expansion for the row and column labels.
maxxspan,maxyspan: Scaling factor for the widths and heights of the rectangles so that they don't overlap.

Author

Jim Lemon - thanks to Adam Maltese for the suggestion

Examples

Run this code

 x<-matrix(sample(10:50,100,TRUE),10)
 xaxlab=c("One","Two","Three","Four","Five","Six","Seven","Eight","Nine","Ten")
 yaxlab=c("First","Second","Third","Fourth","Fifth","Sixth","Seventh",
  "Eighth","Ninth","Tenth")
 battleship.plot(x,xlab="The battle has just begun",main="Battleship1",
  xaxlab=xaxlab,yaxlab=yaxlab)