Cleveland Dot Plots

Usage

dotplot(x, labels = NULL, groups = NULL, gdata = NULL, cex = par("cex"),
        pch = 21, gpch = 21, bg = par("bg"), color = par("fg"),
        gcolor = par("fg"), lcolor = "gray", ...)

Arguments

x either a vector or matrix of numeric values (NAs are allowed). If x is a matrix the overall plot consists of juxtaposed dotplots for each row.
labels a vector of labels for each point. For vectors the default is to use names(x) and for matrices the row labels dimnames(x)[[1]].
groups an optional factor indicating how the elements of x are grouped. If x is a matrix, groups will default to the columns of x.
gdata data values for the groups. This is typically a summary such as the median or mean of each group.
cex the character size to be used. Setting cex to a value smaller than one can be a useful way of avoiding label overlap.
pch the plotting character or symbol to be used.
gpch the plotting character or symbol to be usea for group values.
bg the background color to be used.
color the color to be used for points an labels.
gcolor the color to be used for group labels and values.
lcolor the color to be used for the horizontal lines.
... graphical parameters can also be specified as arguments.

Value

This function is invoked for its side effect, which is to produce two variants of dotplots as described in Cleveland's graphics book.

Dot plots are a reasonable substitute for bar plots.

References

Cleveland, W. S. (1985). The Elements of Graphing Data, Monterey, CA: Wadsworth.

Examples

data(deaths)
dotplot(deaths, main = "Death Rates in Virginia - 1940")
dotplot(t(deaths), main = "Death Rates in Virginia - 1940")

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