R's plotting is great for data exploration, as it often has very intelligent defaults. For example, when plotting with a formula the labels for the plot axes are derived from the formula. In other words, the following two calls produce the same output:
plot(x~y)
plot(x~y, xlab="x", ylab="y")
Is there any way to get a similar "intelligent auto-title"?
For example, I would like to call
plot(x~y, main=<something>)
And produce the same output as calling
plot(x~y, main="plot(x~y)")
Where the <something> inserts the call used using some kind of introspection.
Is there a facility for doing this in R, either through some standard mechanism or an external package?
edit: One suggestion was to specify the formula as a string, and supply that as the argument to a formula() call as well as main. This is useful, but it misses out on parameters than can affect a plot, such as using subsets of data. To elaborate, I'd like
x<-c(1,2,3)
y<-c(1,2,3)
z<-c(0,0,1)
d<-data.frame(x,y,z)
plot(x~y, subset(d, z==0), main=<something>)
To have the same effect as
plot(x~y, subset(d, z==0), main="plot(x~y, subset(d, z==0))")
I don't think this can be done without writing a thin wrapper around plot(). The reason is that R evaluates "supplied arguments" in the evaluation frame of the calling function, in which there's no way to access the current function call (see here for details).
By contrast, "default arguments" are evaluated in the evaluation frame of the function, from where introspection is possible. Here are a couple of possibilities (differing just in whether you want "myPlot" or "plot" to appear in the title:
## Function that reports actual call to itself (i.e. 'myPlot()') in plot title.
myPlot <- function(x,...) {
cl <- deparse(sys.call())
plot(x, main=cl, ...)
}
## Function that 'lies' and says that plot() (rather than myPlot2()) called it.
myPlot2 <- function(x,...) {
cl <- sys.call()
cl[[1]] <- as.symbol("plot")
cl <- deparse(cl)
plot(x, main=cl, ...)
}
## Try them out
x <- 1:10
y <- 1:10
par(mfcol=c(1,2))
myPlot(x,y)
myPlot2(y~x)
Here's a more general solution:
plotCaller <- function(plotCall, ...) {
main <- deparse(substitute(plotCall))
main <- paste(main, collapse="\n")
eval(as.call(c(as.list(substitute(plotCall)), main=main, ...)))
}
## Try _it_ out
plotCaller(hist(rnorm(9999), breaks=100, col="red"))
library(lattice)
plotCaller(xyplot(rnorm(10)~1:10, pch=16))
## plotCaller will also pass through additional arguments, so they take effect
## without being displayed
plotCaller(xyplot(rnorm(10)~1:10), pch=16)
deparse will attempt to break deparsed lines if they get too long (the default is 60 characters). When it does this, it returns a vector of strings. plot methods assume that 'main' is a single string, so the line main <- paste(main, collapse='\n') deals with this by concatenating all the strings returned by deparse, joining them using \n.
Here is an example of where this is necessary:
plotCaller(hist(rnorm(9999), breaks=100, col="red", xlab="a rather long label",
ylab="yet another long label"))
Of course there is! Here ya go:
x = rnorm(100)
y = sin(x)
something = "y~x"
plot(formula(something),main=something)
You might be thinking of the functionality of match.call. However that only really works when called inside of a function, not passed in as an argument. You could create your wrapper function that would call match.call then pass everything else on to plot or use substitute to capture the call then modify it with the call before evaluating:
x <- runif(25)
y <- rnorm(25, x, .1)
myplot <- function(...) {
tmp <- match.call()
plot(..., main=deparse(tmp))
}
myplot( y~x )
myplot( y~x, xlim=c(-.25,1.25) )
## or
myplot2 <- function(FUN) {
tmp1 <- substitute(FUN)
tmp2 <- deparse(tmp1)
tmp3 <- as.list(tmp1)
tmp4 <- as.call(c(tmp3, main=tmp2))
eval(tmp4)
}
myplot2( plot(y~x) )
myplot2( plot(y~x, xlim=c(-.25,1.25) ) )
Related
I have been trying to find a way to make a scatter plot with colour intensity that is indicative of the density of points plotted in the area (it's a big data set with lots of overlap). I found these lines of code which allow me to do this but I want to make sure I actually understand what each line is actually doing.
Thanks in advance :)
get_density <- function(x, y, ...){
dens <- MASS::kde2d(x, y, ...)
ix <- findInterval(x, dens$x)
iy <- findInterval(y, dens$y)
ii <- cbind(ix, iy)
return(dens$z[ii])
}
set.seed(1)
dat <- data.frame(x = subset2$conservation.phyloP, y = subset2$gene.expression.RPKM)
dat$density <- get_density(dat$x, dat$y, n = 100)
Below is the function with some explanatory comments, let me know if anything is still confusing:
# The function "get_density" takes two arguments, called x and y
# The "..." allows you to pass other arguments
get_density <- function(x, y, ...){
# The "MASS::" means it comes from the MASS package, but makes it so you don't have to load the whole MASS package and can just pull out this one function to use.
# This is where the arguments passed as "..." (above) would get passed along to the kde2d function
dens <- MASS::kde2d(x, y, ...)
# These lines use the base R function "findInterval" to get the density values of x and y
ix <- findInterval(x, dens$x)
iy <- findInterval(y, dens$y)
# This command "cbind" pastes the two sets of values together, each as one column
ii <- cbind(ix, iy)
# This line takes a subset of the "density" output, subsetted by the intervals above
return(dens$z[ii])
}
# The "set.seed()" function makes sure that any randomness used by a function is the same if it is re-run (as long as the same number is used), so it makes code more reproducible
set.seed(1)
dat <- data.frame(x = subset2$conservation.phyloP, y = subset2$gene.expression.RPKM)
dat$density <- get_density(dat$x, dat$y, n = 100)
If your question is about the MASS::kde2d function itself, it might be better to rewrite this StackOverflow question to reflect that!
It looks like the same function is wrapped into a ggplot2 method described here, so if you switch to making your plot with ggplot2 you could give it a try.
I'm writing a short R package which contains a function. The function returns a list of vectors. I would like to use the plot function in order to plot by default a plot done with some of those vectors, add lines and add a new parameter.
As an example, if I use the survival package I can get the following:
library(survival)
data <- survfit(Surv(time, status == 2) ~ 1, data = pbc)
plot(data) # Plots the result of survfit
plot(data, conf.int = "none") # New parameter
In order to try to make a reproducible example:
f <- function(x, y){
b <- x^2
c <- y^2
d <- x+y
return(list(one = b, two = c, three = d))
}
dat <- f(3, 2)
So using plot(dat) I would like to get the same as plot(dat$one, dat$two). I would also like to add one more (new) parameter that could be set to TRUE/FALSE.
Is this possible?
I think you might be looking for classes. You can use the S3 system for this.
For your survival example, data has the class survfit (see class(data)). Then using plot(data) will look for a function called plot.survfit. That is actually a non-exported function in the survival package, at survival:::plot.survfit.
You can easily do the same for your package. For example, have a function that creates an object of class my_class, and then define a plotting method for that class:
f <- function(x, y){
b <- x^2
c <- y^2
d <- x+y
r <- list(one = b, two = c, three = d)
class(r) <- c('list', 'my_class') # this is the important bit.
r
}
plot.my_class <- function(x) {
plot(x$one, x$two)
}
Now your code should work:
dat <- f(3, 2)
plot(dat)
You can put anything in plot.my_class you want, including additional arguments, as long as your first argument is x and is the my_class object.
plot now calls plot.my_class, since dat is of class my_class.
You can also add other methods, e.g. for print.
There are many different plotting functions that can be called with plot for different classes, see methods(plot)
Also see Hadley's Advanced R book chapter on S3.
I have written a function that draws some plots, and returns a list, similar in style to the following format:
myfun <- function(x, y){
plot(x, y)
points(x+1, y+1)
abline(v=x[1])
mylist <- list(x=x,y=y,line=x[1])
return(mylist)
}
This works fine. However, in R, one generally plots from functions in the following way:
x <- rnorm(100)
y <- rnorm(100)
lin <- lm(x~y)
plot(lin)
i.e., one creates an object using the function, then uses plot(object) to get the plot. How can I set up my function to behave in this way? I've had a look at a few guides to writing R packages (including hadley's), but I couldn't find reference to this problem.
I would like to create this functionality so I can upload what I've created to CRAN or R-Forge.
You could create your own S3 class for it (
R provides a lot of object oriented systems (S3, S4, R5, R.oo, ...), see also: http://adv-r.had.co.nz/OO-essentials.html):
# create an object with an own class
lin = list(x=rnorm(100), y=rnorm(100))
class(lin) = "mylin"
# overload plotting function
plot.mylin = function(l) {
plot(l$x, l$y)
points(l$x+1, l$y+1, col=2)
abline(v=l$x[1])
}
# run it
plot(lin)
I am using a function in R (specifically limma::plotMDS) that produces a plot and also returns a useful value. I want to get the returned value without producing the plot. Is there an easy way to call the function but suppress the plot that it creates?
You can wrap the function call like this :
plotMDS.invisible <- function(...){
ff <- tempfile()
png(filename=ff)
res <- plotMDS(...)
dev.off()
unlink(ff)
res
}
An example of call :
x <- matrix(rnorm(1000*6,sd=0.5),1000,6)
rownames(x) <- paste("Gene",1:1000)
x[1:50,4:6] <- x[1:50,4:6] + 2
# without labels, indexes of samples are plotted.
mds <- plotMDS.invisible(x, col=c(rep("black",3), rep("red",3)) )
I am creating an automated plotter, based on some dummy variables. I set it up such that:
plotter <- function(...) { }
will plot all the dummies I feed it.
However, I would like it to be able to add labels to the plot, namely the variable names.
I do know that
deparse(substitute(variablename))
will yield
"variablename"
which is a start, but how do I do this in the case of multiple arguments? Is it at possible? Is there a workaround?
names(list(...)) will get you a character vector containing the names of the supplied arguments that have been absorbed by ...:
plotter <- function(...) {names(list(...))}
plotter(x=1:4, y=11:14)
# [1] "x" "y"
Alternatively, if you want to pass in unnamed arguments, try this (which extends #baptiste's now-deleted answer):
plotter <- function(..., pch=16, col="red") {
nms <- setdiff(as.character(match.call(expand.dots=TRUE)),
as.character(match.call(expand.dots=FALSE)))
nms
}
x <- 1:4
y <- 1:14
plotter(x, y, col="green")
# [1] "x" "y"