[R] Newbie graphing questions

[Marc Schwartz]

On Wed, 2003-08-27 at 17:28, Francisco J. Bido wrote: 
> Hi everyone.  R is new to me and I'm very impressed with its 
> capabilities but still cannot figure out how to do some basic things.  
> There seems to be no lack of documentation but finding what I need has 
> proven difficult.  Perhaps you can help.
> 
> Here's what I'm after:
> 
> 1.  How do I create a new plot without erasing the prior one i.e., have 
> a new window pop up with the new graph? I'm on MacOSX using the Carbon 
> port.

In general, if you want to leave the existing device open and have a new
device open for a new plot, you simply call the device name that you
want to open (ie. under Linux you would use X11() ) to open a new
plotting device on the display.  See ?Devices for more details.

> 2.  How do I pause between plot renderings i.e., in such a way that it 
> will draw the subsequent graph after pressing the space bar (or any 
> other key).

Set 'par(ask = TRUE)' before plotting. See ?par

> 3.  Illustrating critical regions.  Say I wanted to illustrate the 
> critical region of a standard normal.  I would need to draw a vertical 
> line from the critical point to the curve and then shade the critical 
> region.  How do I do this in R?

# Generate a sequence of x values
x <- seq(-3, 3, by = 0.001)

# Plot normal curve over x
plot(x, dnorm(x), type = "l")

# Define left side boundary using min(x)
# and CritVal using alpha = 0.05

alpha <- 0.05
CritVal <- qnorm(alpha / 2)

x.l <- seq(min(x), CritVal, length = 100)
y.l <- c(dnorm(x.l), 0, 0)

# add CritVal, min(x) to complete polygon
x.l <- c(x.l, CritVal, min(x))

# draw and fill left region
polygon(x.l, y.l, density = 50)


# Do the same for right side boundary using max(x)
# and Crit Val

CritVal <- qnorm(1 - (alpha / 2))

x.r <- seq(CritVal, max(x), length = 100)
y.r <- c(dnorm(x.r), 0, 0)

# add max(x) and CritVal to complete polygon
x.r <- c(x.r, max(x) , CritVal)

# draw and fill left region
polygon(x.r, y.r, density = 50)



HTH,

Marc Schwartz