[R] problem with multiple plots (mfrow, mar)

[Greg Snow]

Use outer margins.  Try something like:

> par(mfrow=c(3,1), mar=c(0,4,0,2)+0.1, oma=c(5,0,3,0)+0.1 )

Then do your plots without resetting margins.

Also you can use xaxt='n' rather than axes=FALSE to suppress just the x axis and not have to do the y axis and box by hand.

Hope this helps,

-- 
Gregory (Greg) L. Snow Ph.D.
Statistical Data Center
Intermountain Healthcare
greg.snow at imail.org
801.408.8111


> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-
> project.org] On Behalf Of Peter Neuhaus
> Sent: Thursday, February 18, 2010 10:11 AM
> To: r-help at r-project.org
> Subject: [R] problem with multiple plots (mfrow, mar)
> 
> Dear R-users,
> 
> I often stack plots that have the same x-axis. To save space and have
> the plots themselves as large as possible I like to minimize the
> margins
> between the plots to zero. I use the "mfrow" and "mar" parameters to
> achieve this.
> 
> However, the different margin settings for the individual plots lead to
> the inner plots being higher than the two outer plots. To make the
> data in the individual subplots visually comparable, I would like
> to have all plots with a plotting area of exactly the same height.
> 
> How would that be done in R?
> 
> Here's some example code to illustrate my problem:
> 
> # BEGIN
> x <- 1:10
> a <- runif(10, 0, 5)
> b <- runif(10, 0, 5)
> c <- runif(10, 0, 5)
> 
> ylim <- c(0, 5)
> 
> par(mfrow=c(3,1))
> par(mar=c(0,4.1,2.1,3.1))
> 
> plot(x, a, type="o", ylim=ylim, axes=FALSE)
> axis(1, labels=FALSE)
> axis(2)
> axis(3)
> axis(4)
> box()
> 
> par(mar=c(0,4.1,0,3.1))
> 
> plot(x, b, type="o", ylim=ylim, axes=FALSE)
> axis(1, labels=FALSE)
> axis(2)
> axis(3, labels=FALSE)
> axis(4)
> box()
> 
> par(mar=c(2.1,4.1,0,3.1))
> 
> plot(x, c, type="o", ylim=ylim, axes=FALSE)
> axis(1)
> axis(2)
> axis(3, labels=FALSE)
> axis(4)
> box()
> # END
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> 
> Peter
> 
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