[R] rcmdr and mailing lists

[John Fox]

Dear Katherine,

The plotMeans function in the Rcmdr package isn't intended to do what you
want (in fact, I'd argue that in most cases it isn't desirable to plot means
in a bar graph), but R graphics are very flexible and it wouldn't be hard to
make the plot that you describe. I'd start with barplot() to draw the bar
graph, and then add the error bars, probably using arrows().

If you haven't done so already, you might want to read something about using
R graphics -- such as a general book on R or Paul Murrell's book on R
Graphics.

BTW, using the Rcmdr for statistics shouldn't be much slower (in execution,
anyway) than entering commands directly, since the Rcmdr just causes
commands to be executed.

I hope this helps,
 John

--------------------------------
John Fox, Professor
Department of Sociology
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario
Canada L8S 4M4
905-525-9140x23604
http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/jfox 
-------------------------------- 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org 
> [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org] On Behalf Of Katherine Jones
> Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2007 9:00 AM
> To: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
> Subject: [R] rcmdr and mailing lists
> 
> I am trying to draw a bar chart with standard error bars for 
> two groups. I was struggling in R so have now managed to get 
> rcmdr up and running on my mac (although the help frequently 
> crashes, everything else seems fine, if a bit sluggish; 
> wouldn't use it for stats). This has allowed me to very 
> easily create a plot of the means and standard errors
> 
> BUT-does anyone know if it is possible to get rid of the 
> connect line between the means and to add bars to the chart?
> 
> I'm generally happy with doing stats in R but currently lack 
> a package to draw very simple bar charts of means for my 
> behavioural data; I have a mac and not much site licensed software.
> 
> Thanks for everyones help so far,
> 
> Dr Katherine Jones
> Department of Biology,
> Carleton University
> 
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