Thanks Marc. I followed your suggestion and I got R to plot the correct
graph! You are absolutely correct about R switching automatically from
plot() to plot.factor(). I had no idea that it would do that. It looks like
having the header is very important in R. Appreciate your help very much.

On 10/16/06, Marc Schwartz <MSchwartz@mn.rr.com> wrote:
>
> Tom,
>
> If your text file, 'sp.txt' contains the headers used on that web page,
> then your read.table() function call is incorrect.
>
> Your call below presently has 'header = 0'. Use TRUE/FALSE for easier
> reading of code. The tutorial seems to be inconsistent with that.
>
> If your text file contains the 'Date' and 'SP500' column headers, then
> your SP500 data column is going to be read in as a character variable,
> as R will see the first entry of 'SP500' as a character value, not as a
> column header.
>
> This column in turn, will be coerced to a factor, resulting in the
> errors you are seeing, as plot.factor() will be used.
>
> You should be using:
>
> d <- read.table("c:/test/sp.txt", header = TRUE)
>
> Use:
>
> str(d)
>
> to review the current structure of your data frame. That should give you
> some hints.
>
> HTH,
>
> Marc Schwartz
>
>
> On Mon, 2006-10-16 at 10:54 -0500, tom soyer wrote:
> > Hi David and Duncan,
> >
> > Thanks for the reply. I am using R-2.4.0 for windows. All I am trying to
> do
> > is follow an online tutorial (
> > http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/11/17/r_for_statistics.html)
> step by
> > step. spval is just an array of numbers. I also tried using type="1"
> instead
> > of "l", but got same warning message and the same bar graph. Are there
> any
> > packages that I should have installed? I haven't installed any
> contributed
> > package, only the base distribution.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Tom
> >
> >
> > On 10/16/06, David Barron <mothsailor@googlemail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > It's possible the problem is with your data; could you provide some
> > > sample data with which we can reproduce the error?
> > >
> > > On 16/10/06, tom soyer <tom.soyer@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > Hi,
> > > >
> > > > I am new to R and I have been trying it out. I ran into a problem
> with
> > > the
> > > > plot() function. Below is my code:
> > > >
> > > >  > d <- read.table("c:/test/sp.txt",header=0)
> > > > > spval <- d[,2]
> > > > > plot(spval,type="l")
> > > > Warning messages:
> > > > 1: graphical parameter "type" is obsolete in: plot.window(xlim,
> ylim,
> > > log,
> > > > asp, ...)
> > > > 2: graphical parameter "type" is obsolete in: axis(side, at, labels,
> > > tick,
> > > > line, pos, outer, font, lty, lwd,
> > > > 3: graphical parameter "type" is obsolete in: title(main, sub, xlab,
> > > ylab,
> > > > line, outer, ...)
> > > > 4: graphical parameter "type" is obsolete in: axis(side, at, labels,
> > > tick,
> > > > line, pos, outer, font, lty, lwd,
> > > >
> > > > I tried to plot a line graph from a text file with two columns. Some
> how
> > > R
> > > > won't plot the data as lines, and it kept giving me the same
> warning:
> > > "type"
> > > > is obsolete. What does this mean? Am I doing something wrong, or is
> the
> > > > parameter really obsolete, or do I need install some package?
> > > >
> > > > Thanks,
> > > >
> > > > Tom
> > > >
>
>

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