plot.circular: Circular Data Plot

Description

Creates a plot of circular data points on the current graphics device. Data points are either plotted as points on the unit circle, or the range of the circle is divided into a specified number of bins, and points are stacked in the bins corresponding to the number of observations in each bin.

Usage

# S3 method for circular
plot(x, pch = 16, cex = 1, stack = FALSE,
  axes = TRUE, start.sep=0, sep = 0.025, shrink = 1,
  bins = NULL, ticks = FALSE, tcl = 0.025, tcl.text = 0.125,
  col = NULL, tol = 0.04, uin = NULL,
  xlim = c(-1, 1), ylim = c(-1, 1), digits = 2, units = NULL,
  template = NULL, zero = NULL, rotation = NULL, 
  main = NULL, sub=NULL, xlab = "", ylab = "", 
  control.circle=circle.control(), ...)

Arguments

a vector, matrix or data.frame. The object is coerced to class circular.

pch

point character to use. See help on par.

cex

point character size. See help on par.

stack

logical; if TRUE, points are stacked on the perimeter of the circle. Otherwise, all points are plotted on the perimeter of the circle. Default is FALSE.

axes

logical; if TRUE axes are plotted according to properties of x.

start.sep

constant used to specify the distance between the center of the point and the axis.

sep

constant used to specify the distance between stacked points, if stack==TRUE or in the case of more than one dataset. Default is 0.025; smaller values will create smaller spaces.

shrink

parameter that controls the size of the plotted circle. Default is 1. Larger values shrink the circle, while smaller values enlarge the circle.

bins

if stack==TRUE, bins is the number of arcs to partition the circle with.

ticks

logical; if TRUE ticks are plotted according to the value of bins.

tcl

length of the ticks.

tcl.text

The position of the axis labels.

col

color of the points. The values are recycled if needed.

tol

proportion of white space at the margins of plot.

uin

desired values for the units per inch parameter. If of length 1, the desired units per inch on the x axis.

xlim, ylim

the ranges to be encompassed by the x and y axes. Useful for centering the plot.

digits

number of digits used to print axis values.

main, sub, xlab, ylab

title, subtitle, x label and y label of the plot.

units

the units used in the plot.

template

the template used in the plot.

zero

the zero used in the plot.

rotation

the rotation used in the plot.

control.circle

parameters passed to plot.default in order to draw the circle. The function circle.control is used to set the parameters.

…

futher parameters passed to points.default.

Value

A list with information on the plot: zero, rotation and next.points.

Details

When there are many closely distributed observations, stacking is recommended. When stacking the points, if there are many points in a particular bin, it may be necessary to shrink the plot of the circle so that all points fit. This is controlled with the parameter shrink. Generally the parameter sep does not need adjustment, however, when shrinking the plot, or for a very large number of observations, it may be helpful. Since version 0.3-9 the intervals are on the form [a,b).

Examples

Run this code

# NOT RUN {
# Generate 100 observations from a von Mises distribution.
# with mean direction 0 and concentration 3.
data.vm <- rvonmises(n=100, mu=circular(0), kappa=3) 

# Plot data set. All points do not fit on plot.
plot(data.vm, stack=TRUE, bins=150) 

# Shrink the plot so that all points fit.
plot(data.vm, stack=TRUE, bins=150, shrink=1.5) 

# Recentering the figure in a different place
plot(data.vm, stack=TRUE, bins=150, xlim=c(-1,1.2), ylim=c(-1,0)) 

# }

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