[R] forrest plot

[Thomas Lumley]

On Wed, 19 Oct 2005, Romain Francois wrote:
> Pretty interresting. You just pointed to a good candidate for r graph
> gallery.

There is an example on the R home page, and has been for some time. I have 
an improved version based on grid code by Paul Murrell, but it's not on a 
nearby computer.  The other meta-analysis package also has a forest-plot 
function.

Incidentally, I was just motivated to track down whether it is "Forrest" 
or "forest" [ie for\^et], as I had assumed. Both spellings appear on 
meta-analyses, even in the top medical journals (which, unlike most 
academic journals, have moderately aggresive copy-editors).  A feedback 
archive for the  Cochrane Collaboration style guide says

"The plot was not called a forest plot in print for some time, and the
  origins of this title are obscured by history and myth. At the September
  1990 meeting of the breast cancer overview, Richard Peto jokingly
  mentioned the the plot was named after the breast cancer researcher Pat
  Forrest, and, at times, the names has been spelt forrest plot.
  However, the phrase actually originates from the idea that the typical
  plot appears as a forest of lines.
  Lewis S, Clarke M. Forest plots: trying to see the wood and the trees.
  BMJ 2001;322:1479-80."


 	-thomas

Thomas Lumley			Assoc. Professor, Biostatistics
tlumley at u.washington.edu	University of Washington, Seattle