[R] Plotting Example Fail

[Boris Steipe]

... or read about set.seed() and use it.

B.


On Nov 24, 2015, at 2:58 PM, William Dunlap <wdunlap at tibco.com> wrote:

> rpois(100, 5) gives a different set of random numbers each time it is
> called, so if you want repeatable results compute it once and use its
> value in the calls to plot.  E.g.,
>   r <- rpois(100, 5)
>   plot(table(r), type="h", col="red", lwd=10, main="hello")
> Bill Dunlap
> TIBCO Software
> wdunlap tibco.com
> 
> 
> On Tue, Nov 24, 2015 at 11:47 AM, Timothy D. Legg <r at timothylegg.com> wrote:
>> Hello,
>> 
>> I am quite new to R and have high expectations for my future with it.
>> 
>> R version 3.0.2 (2013-09-25) -- "Frisbee Sailing"
>> Copyright (C) 2013 The R Foundation for Statistical Computing
>> Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (64-bit)
>> 
>> I have stepped back to an earlier tutorial and found an odd inconsistency
>> with one of the examples:
>> 
>> plot(table(rpois(100, 5)), type = "h", col = "red", lwd = 10, main =
>> "rpois(100, lambda = 5)")
>> 
>> I read the local documentation on the plot command and it's arguments.
>>> From that, I learned that 'main' defines the title from a text string.  I
>> decide to modify some values to see how the resulting behavior changes.
>> What I didn't expect was that modifying the text string caused the chart
>> to change greatly.
>> 
>> plot(table(rpois(100, 5)), type = "h", col = "red", lwd = 10, main =
>> "rpois(100, lambda = 4)")
>> 
>> With the previous line, the columns change values.
>> 
>> plot(table(rpois(100, 5)), type = "h", col = "red", lwd = 10, main = "hello")
>> 
>> This line even adds a 12th column.
>> 
>> I return to plot the original and the output has changed again.   Here are
>> some screenshots
>> 
>> http://timothylegg.com/R/lambda5_.png
>> http://timothylegg.com/R/lambda5.png
>> http://timothylegg.com/R/lambda4.png
>> http://timothylegg.com/R/hello.png
>> 
>> What am I doing wrong to get inconsistent results like this?  I'm very new
>> to R and really hoping that this is a misunderstanding on my part.
>> 
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-help at r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.