A 3d wireframe plot is a type of graph that is used to display a surface – geographic data is an example of where this type of graph would be used or it could be used to display a fitted model with more than one explanatory variable. These plots are related to contour plots which are the two dimensional equivalent. Read the rest of this entry »
Analysis of Covariance – Extending Simple Linear Regression
April 28th, 2010The simple linear regression model considers the relationship between two variables and in many cases more information will be available that can be used to extend the model. For example, there might be a categorical variable (sometimes known as a covariate) that can be used to divide the data set to fit a separate linear regression to each of the subsets. We will consider how to handle this extension using one of the data sets available within the R software package. Read the rest of this entry »
Summarising data using box and whisker plots
April 25th, 2010A box and whisker plot is a type of graphical display that can be used to summarise a set of data based on the five number summary of this data. The summary statistics used to create a box and whisker plot are the median of the data, the lower and upper quartiles (25% and 75%) and the minimum and maximum values. Read the rest of this entry »
Simple Linear Regression
April 23rd, 2010One of the most frequent used techniques in statistics is linear regression where we investigate the potential relationship between a variable of interest (often called the response variable but there are many other names in use) and a set of one of more variables (known as the independent variables or some other term). Unsurprisingly there are flexible facilities in R for fitting a range of linear models from the simple case of a single variable to more complex relationships. Read the rest of this entry »
Summarising data using scatter plots
April 18th, 2010A scatter plot is a graph used to investigate the relationship between two variables in a data set. The x and y axes are used for the values of the two variables and a symbol on the graph represents the combination for each pair of values in the data set. This type of graph is used in many common situations and can convey a lot of useful information. Read the rest of this entry »
Working with themes in Lattice Graphics
April 12th, 2010The Trellis graphics approach provides facilities for creating effective graphs with a consistent look and feel and one of the good things about the system is the use of themes to define the colour, size and other features of the components that make up a graph. The lattice package in R is an implementation of the approach and in this post we will consider how to change the default settings. Read the rest of this entry »
Summarising data using histograms
April 11th, 2010The histogram is a standard type of graphic used to summarise univariate data where the range of values in the data set is divided into regions and a bar (usually vertical) is plotted in each of these regions with height proportional to the frequency of observations in that region. In some cases the proportion of data points in each region is shown instead of counts. Read the rest of this entry »
Summarising data using dot plots
March 26th, 2010A dot plot is a type of display that compares counts, frequencies, totals or other summary measures for a series of categories. The dot plot can be arranged with the categories either on the vertical or horizontal axis of the display to allow comparising between the different categories as well as comparison within categories where there are multiple symbols used to denote say different years. Read the rest of this entry »
