[R] need help with a time series plotting problem

[Rui Barradas]

vibhava wrote
> 
> Dear R Users,
>                      I am a beginner in R programming and need some help
> with a simple plotting problem that i am having. My dataset consist of
> three columns: first one has data_id, second is the date and third is the
> actual data itself corresponding to each date. The date ranges from
> 1/1/2000-12/31/2009. I am trying to plot my data versus the dates as a
> long term time series but what's happening is that R is plotting each year
> on top of the previous year. so instead of getting 1 line (dated
> 2000-2009) in the plot i am getting 9 lines (1 line for each year). i
> tried to look for solutions online but found nothing. can someone suggest
> how can i make a plot with x-axis ranging from 2000-2009. my code is
> copied below:
> 
> setwd("J:/Rstuff/flow")
> flow=read.delim("flow.dat",header=TRUE,sep="\t")
> plot(flow$usgs1500~as.Date(flow$date,
> "%m/%d/%y"),type="l",xlab="date",ylab="daily discharge (m3/s)
> ",main="USGS1500",yaxs="i", xaxs="i",)
> 
> 
> any help would be appreciated
> 
> regards
> 
> vibhava
> 

Hello,

If I'm understanding it well, this is a time series problem, use time series
functions.

You can use 'stats::ts' or, what seems to be better for your problem,
package zoo.
Here is an example.

library(zoo)

flow <- read.delim( ... etc ...


flow$Date <- as.Date(flow$Date, format="%m/%d/%Y")
head(flow$Date)  # see if it worked

zflow <- zoo(flow[,-1], order.by=flow$Date)  # make the time series

plot(zflow)                      # all 8 series, ugly axes
plot(zflow$USGS700)  # just the first series, ugly axes

If this helps, then make it pretty with Jim's ideas.
See also the 'plot.zoo' help page, it has several examples with fancy
labels.

Rui Barradas


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