[R] , how to express bar(zeta) in main title in boxplot

[David Winsemius]

On Jul 22, 2010, at 5:01 PM, Peter Ehlers wrote:

> On 2010-07-22 14:40, David Winsemius wrote:
>>
>> On Jul 22, 2010, at 4:24 PM, Peter Ehlers wrote:
>>
>>> On 2010-07-22 11:44, Marcus Liu wrote:
>>>> Hi everyone, I am plotting a boxplot with main title as main =
>>>> bquote(paste(.(ts.ind[s]), ": ", bar(zeta), " Boxplot from 2001 to
>>>> 2009", sep = "")) but it doesn't work. The program said they cannot
>>>> find the function "bar". Does anyone know how to do it correctly?
>>>> Thanks.
>>>>
>>>
>>> A reproducible example with the exact error message would
>>> be good. Anyway, it seems pretty clear what you want and
>>> one solution is to _not_ use 'main='. For base graphics,
>>> I usually prefer to add titles with the title() function
>>> which will work here.
>>>
>>> a <- pi
>>> boxplot(rnorm(200))
>>> title(bquote(paste(.(a), ": ", bar(zeta),
>>> " Boxplot from 2001 to 2009", sep = "")))
>>>
>>> It seems that setting main=<...> where <...> contains
>>> bquote() works with plot(), but not with boxplot().
>>
>> The help page for boxplot does not document a "main" argument, nor  
>> is it
>> in the argument list for boxplot.default or its bxp function. The
>> documentation for the "..." argument does not suggest, to me anyway,
>> that main would passed on to other graphical functions.
>>
>
> Well, that's not quite so. From ?bxp:
>
> ".... and main, cex.main, col.main, sub, cex.sub, col.sub, xlab,
> ylab, cex.lab, and col.lab are passed to title"

I stand (or sit) corrected.

>
> # To wit:
> y <- rnorm(200)
> g <- gl(2,100)
> boxplot(y ~ g, main="My title")
>
> # But I wasn't right, either:
> a <- pi
> boxplot(y ~ g, main=paste("hello", bquote(.(a)), "goodbye"))
> boxplot(y ~ g, main=expression("hello"~~bar(zeta)~~"goodbye"))
>
> I do usually prefer to use main="" and then supply the title
> separately. But I'll wager that either Gabor or Uwe or ...
> will make main= work for the OP.

Both are working on my machine.

-- 
David Winsemius, MD
West Hartford, CT