[R] Plotting 15 million points

[Nordlund, Dan (DSHS/RDA)]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org] On
> Behalf Of Abhishek Pratap
> Sent: Thursday, February 25, 2010 3:12 PM
> To: r-help at r-project.org
> Subject: [R] Plotting 15 million points
> 
> Hi All
> 
> I have a vector of about 15 million numbers which I would like to
> plot. The goal is the see the distribution.  I tired the usual steps.
> 
> 1. Histogram : never gets complete my window freezes w/out log base 10
> 2. Density  : I first calculated the kernel density and then plotted
> it which worked.
> 
> It would be nice to superimpose histogram with density but as of now I
> am not able to get this data as a histogram. I tried ggplot2 which
> also hangs.
> 
> Any efficient methods to play with > 10 million numbers in a vector.
> 
> Thanks,
> -Abhi
> 

You need to show us what you did.  Generating 15 million random normals and plotting a histogram worked just fine on my desktop in a matter of ~6 seconds.

> x <- rnorm(15e6)
> hist(x)

Dan

Daniel J. Nordlund
Washington State Department of Social and Health Services
Planning, Performance, and Accountability
Research and Data Analysis Division
Olympia, WA  98504-5204