Paul, I agree completely. I didn't come at this with a programming background, and I never noticed the other plot links, or understood their importance. The "plot" help page was one of the first help pages I ever looked at and I remember that It was totally confusing. In fact, help pages like that essentially trained me to ignore most of the text in the help pages. Ignoring the help was a good survival tactic until I understood the R language better and grew accustomed to the jargon.
Maybe it would be better if the plot help page just informed you that it's a convenience function and listed links to common plot calls, like "plot.function" or even "plot.lm", and talked more about "par" and "curve" R is great for the people who use it, but it's really hard to build up to the point where you're a user! On Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 5:31 PM, Paul Menzel < paulepan...@users.sourceforge.net> wrote: > Am Mittwoch, den 27.07.2011, 18:04 -0400 schrieb David Winsemius: > > On Jul 27, 2011, at 5:53 PM, Paul Menzel wrote: > > > > as `plot.function` is not explicitly mentioned in `?plot`. > > > > Right, but the fact that it _is_ described as a "generic" function > > will tell the clueful that other methods other than the default method > > may exist, and that their availability may vary with which packages > > are loaded. > > Of course, when you know what to do it is clear where to look. I just > want to offer a view point from a beginner and adding that little > comment would have saved me half an hour. (Because searching for »r > plotting function« did not result in good hits.) > > > > One further comment regarding the examples in `?plot.function`. Trying > > > those in order > > > > > > op <- par(mfrow = c(2, 2)) > > > chippy <- function(x) sin(cos(x)*exp(-x/2)) > > > plot (chippy, -8, -5) > > > for(ll in c("", "x", "y", "xy")) > > > curve(log(1+x), 1, 100, log = ll, > > > sub = paste("log= '", ll, "'", sep = "")) > > > par(op) > > > > > > I do not see any effect executing `par(op)` at the end. Reading `? > > > par` I > > > assume it should go before the for loop? > > > > No. Read: > > > > ?par > > > > It has both a value and a side-effect. Pay particular attention to its > > value for its first invocation. Then think about why its side-effect > > is what you want _after_ the loop. Then you may understand what is > > happening. Report back to the class. (This isn't in the Introductory > > material you are reading?) > > I messed up and somehow missed to execute `op <- par(mfrow = c(2, 2))` > when first running the examples and jumped to wrong conclusion. I am > sorry for the noise. > > > Thank you for your patience and help, > > Paul > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@r-project.org mailing list > 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. > > [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list 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.